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Book 

Copyright N° — 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE UNTRIED 
CIVILIZATION 



By 
JOHN WILLIAM FRAZER 




THE ABINGDON PRESS 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



^ 



c* 



^ 



Copyright, 1921, by 
JOHN WILLIAM FRAZER 



OCT 26 1921 



Printed in the United States of America 



§)CU624999 






To my Father 
The Rev. John Stanley Frazer, D.D. 

THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS 
AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTBB PAGE 

Note 7 

Introduction 9 

I. The Meaning of Civilization 13 

II . What Is Modern Civilization? 29 

III . The Temper of the Times 45 

IV. A Definite Type Inevitable 57 

V . Is Christian Civilization Practical ? 73 

VI. Christianity the Way of Progress. 100 

VII. The Divine Right of the Church . . 118 



NOTE 

I wish to express my gratitude to Dr. 
Joseph Fort Newton, minister of the Church 
of The Divine Paternity, New York City, 
for his kind words of introduction; to Dr. 
Guy E. Snavley, of Birmingham-Southern 
College, for his practical helpfulness ; and to 
The Fleming H. Revell Publishing Com- 
pany for permission to use quotations from 
their publications. 

J. W. F. 



INTRODUCTION 

The thesis of these essays is that Chris- 
tianity, so far from being merely a private 
mysticism, is at once a plan and a power for 
the salvation of humanity alike from in- 
dividual sin and social chaos. The com- 
munal redemption of mankind — nothing 
else or less — was the vision in the mind of 
Jesus, and the world to-day, well-nigh 
bankrupt, will never be solvent until it has 
the wisdom and courage to make trial of his 
leadership. 

Either Jesus was a dreamer of impos- 
sible dreams or he saw straight; and if his 
vision was valid, to reject Christianity as 
the public policy of the world means that the 
race will drift from one disaster to another. 
It serves no good purpose to call him "Lord, 
Lord," if we do not, or cannot, obey his 
commands. It is admited that Christianity 
is difficult, but not more difficult than the 
present policy of the world. It is, in fact, 
an Untried Civilization, and since no one 

9 



INTRODUCTION 

can say that our present civilization is a suc- 
cess, it is time to consider whether or not 
Jesus was right; and if so, whether we can 
translate his proposal into reality. 

As such these essays — more suggestive 
than exhaustive, and as lucid in style as they 
are thoughtful in treatment — are a token of 
the times, as showing the increasing em- 
phasis upon the gospel of the Kingdom, the 
discovery of which was a trophy of the Great 
War. They are an example of the reverent 
and clear-sighted thinking of a large and 
gallant company of young preachers in all 
communions, who are beginning to see what 
Jesus actually meant, and are resolved to 
preach his larger gospel with gentle but 
relentless insistence in the days that he 
ahead. 

Of old, in the gloaming of the day, the 
risen Christ "made as though he would have 
gone further," but his disciples were too sad- 
hearted to follow. Once again, in our 
troubled day, two ways are set before us: 
either we must follow Jesus in his divine 
adventure or turn away from him. Both 
ways are difficult, but one is hopeless; and 
10 



INTRODUCTION 

the author bids us accept the call of Christ 
as a challenge to the insight and heroism of 
Christian faith and enterprise. 

Joseph Fort Newton. 
New York City. 



11 



CHAPTER I 

THE MEANING OF CIVILIZATION 

Words gather about themselves various 
meanings. Civilization is a term of elastic 
variability. It has at least three distinct 
historical meanings. When the idea of cul- 
ture is lengthened to cover a considerable 
period of time, or broadened to include a 
large social unit, it is expressed by the word 
civilization. In this sense the word "civ- 
ilization" is simply the expansion of the idea 
of culture. Thus we speak of a community, 
a nation, or an age as being civilized. Man 
reacting upon his environment has pro- 
duced tremendous results — houses, machin- 
ery, governments, social institutions, sci- 
ence, literature, philosophy, religion. This 
mighty and ever-increasing result we ex- 
press by the term "civilization." This is 
the most comprehensive use of the term. As 
such it is a vast linguistic storehouse into 
which have been poured the wealth and the 

13 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

rubbish, the trash and the treasures of all 
ages. The sense in which the word shall be 
used in this discussion is a third, and perhaps 
its most common use. By civilization, in 
this use, is meant the dominant ideal or char- 
acteristic of an age or a people. If this use 
of the term is more restricted than the others, 
it is also more definite and workable. By the 
civilization of an age is here meant its chief 
quality, that which molds it into a type of 
life. 

History devotes the major part of its at- 
tention to three distinct and unique types of 
civilization: those of ancient Greece, Rome, 
and the Hebrew Commonwealth. These na- 
tions are the most conspicuous examples 
of the types which they represent. The 
Golden Age of Greece was the most aesthetic 
and intellectual period of human history. 
Art, poetry, philosophy were its grand 
achievements. The artistic structure of 
Hellenistic culture was fashioned on the 
ideal of intellectual beauty. Quinet, in his 
Genie des Religions, says that the Homeric 
poems became "the Book of the Law for the 
Hellenic peoples, so that Homer became for 
14 



MEANING OF CIVILIZATION 

them what Moses was to the Hebrews. 
Never again shall we see a society regulated 
on the plan of an epic . . . Greek society, in 
fact, tended by constant approximation to 
form itself on the ideal of the Iliad and the 
Odyssey . . . Greece was not untrue to the 
image that had thus been revealed to her; 
on the contrary, she made of the poem a 
truth, of fiction a reality." This age of in- 
tellectual power and wondrous beauty gave 
to the world a literature which has been 
the inspiration of all subsequent literary 
achievements, a philosophy which furnished 
hypotheses to all later philosophic specula- 
tion, a language which is still the most per- 
fect flower of human speech and the most 
flexible medium of human thought. 

The conspicuous element in Roman civil- 
ization was political majesty. It was not 
colossal barbarism hiding its massive figure 
under the purple robe of luxury. The civ- 
ilization of the Roman world was as thor- 
oughgoing as it was imposing. Its ideal was 
the domination of the world, not merely by 
force of arms, but by the superiority of 
Roman political science. Roman civilization 

15 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

typified its matchless genius for govern- 
ment. Over the vast domains inhabited by- 
subject peoples, the strong arm of Roman 
authority maintained peace and order, a 
peace which though secure was rarely op- 
pressive, an order which though imperious 
was usually tolerant. Citizenship under 
Rome carried with it both protection and 
dignity. The Roman scourge could not be 
laid on the back of a Roman citizen. In 
Jerusalem when the magistrates "had laid 
many stripes" upon Paul and Silas, Paul 
complained to the keeper of the prison that 
they had been illegally punished: "They 
have beaten us openly uncondemned, being 
Romans." Justice for the Roman prisoner 
was furthered by a provision which allowed 
him a "final appeal" to Caesar. Roman 
civilization was preeminently executive, leg- 
islative, and judicial. The civilization of 
ancient Rome was the embodiment of the 
majesty of law. 

The ancient Hebrews present a civiliza- 
tion as distinct as it was exceptional. The 
Jewish ideal of civilization was a race gov- 
erned directly by Jehovah. The attribute 
16 



MEANING OF CIVILIZATION 

of Jehovah which chiefly impressed them 
was his holiness. To maintain uninterrupted 
communion with Jehovah the people were 
taught to emulate his holiness. To the de- 
gree that they succeeded would they receive 
counsel and protection from Jehovah, and 
so fulfill their national destiny, a destiny 
to which Providence had ordained them. 
They were an "elect people," whose motto 
was "Holiness unto the Lord." The most 
direful calamity would be for Jehovah 
to "hide his face from them." In every ad- 
versity — defeat in battle, pestilence, drought 
— was seen the frown of their Deity, a frown 
in which they saw reflected their own short- 
comings. Never was there a race to whom 
religion was so objectively realistic, who were 
so conscious of the presence of God, and who 
sought so earnestly to understand and obey 
the divine will. Hebrew civilization was an- 
cient man's most serious and morally suc- 
cessful attempt to interpret his relation to 
his Creator. With the Jewish people the 
ideal of greatness was Godlikeness. Their 
greatest achievements were religious 
achievements, their greatest men were their 

17 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

religious leaders, the center of their national 
life was the temple. It is not a miracle, 
therefore, that Hebrew civilization was the 
fountain head from which have flowed the 
strongest and purest streams of religious 
inspiration which have blessed the world. 
There is no marvel in the fact that a people 
bent on learning the realities of life should 
be the discoverers of a moral realm into 
which other people had never penetrated, 
and should transmit to the future a code of 
morals which is the basis of the race's highest 
ethics. Why should it be thought a thing 
incredible that Jesus Christ was a Jew? 
What wonder that out of the soil from which 
sprang the spiritual giants of the world 
in the fullness of time God should more com- 
pletely reveal himself in a member of their 
race? The characteristic of Hebrew civiliza- 
tion was a genius for religion. 

In Palestine, Greece, and Rome devel- 
oped the civilizations which are the distinct 
and representative achievements of the hu- 
man race, distinct in that each became a type, 
representative in that all ideas which other 
races present are included in one or the other 
18 



MEANING OF CIVILIZATION 

of these great historical civilizations. Each 
antecedent or subsequent historical civiliza- 
tion has been an approach or a reproduc- 
tion of the Hebrew, Grecian, or Roman 
ideal. All that was of real worth in the 
ancient Sumerian and Babylonian civil- 
izations was included and purified in 
Hebrew history. The religious traditions 
and moral discoveries of those ancient 
peoples, instead of being lost as their 
historical epochs came to an end, were ap- 
propriated and developed by the Jewish 
people. Stories like the Fall of Man, The 
Flood, the Tower of Babel — ancient man's 
explanations of his relation to the universe 
— became lessons of great spiritual worth 
when interpreted in the light of Hebrew 
idealism. Moral achievements like the Code 
of Hammurabi were transformed into finer 
standards of conduct after being purified by 
the white flame of Hebrew ethics and shaped 
into the Decalogue of the Old Testament. 
Religious institutions, subsequent to He- 
brew national life, which grew about pure 
ethical ideals, like the social life of the Es- 
senes of the first century and the Puritan 

19 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

movement of the seventeenth century, were 
the reappearance upon the surface of history 
of the clear stream of old Hebrew morality. 
The splendor of Hebrew civilization was the 
white gleaming light of pure morality, a 
morality whose fundamental precept was, 
"Thou shalt not be defiled. " If it was moral 
isolation, it was at the same time moral 
sanitation. 

Hellenistic culture is at once the climax 
and inspiration of the artistic and intellec- 
tual ideal of civilization. The intellectual 
activity of the pre-Grecian world was never 
powerful enough to shape any era into a 
predominantly intellectual age. Likewise, 
the intellectual movement which followed the 
Golden Age of Greece received its impulse 
from Hellenistic learning. The Renaissance 
was the effort to grow Grecian culture on 
the soil of fourteenth-century Europe. It 
was the lingering sunset of Hellenistic civ- 
ilization. Florence, under the reign of Lo- 
renzo the Magnificent, was an imitation of 
the Athens of Pericles. While, like all imita- 
tions, its splendor was more glittering than 
golden, still it was an appreciation of the 
20 



MEANING OF CIVILIZATION 

most cultivated people whose achievements 
have adorned the earth. In Romola, that 
splendid portrayal of Florentine life of that 
day, George Eliot describes how the enthusi- 
asm for Greek literature had spread to all 
classes, the barbers discussing Greek poetry 
with their patrons while performing their 
tonsorial duties. With the debatable excep- 
tion of the Shakesperian dramas, the great 
poetry of eras later than Greece's Golden 
Age are the literary offsprings of the Greek 
poets. Virgil's "iEneid," Dante's "Infer- 
no," Milton's "Paradise Lost" are the chil- 
dren of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" unto 
the fourth generation; while Sophocles's 
"Antigone," and iEschylus's "Prometheus 
Bound" have progenies too numerous to 
mention. Goethe, Schiller, Keats, and 
Shelley drank deep from the springs of Hel- 
lenistic lore. Kant, Carlyle, Montaigne, 
Emerson are the philosophic descendants of 
the broad-browed Athenian. 

Mediaeval Christianity, which developed 
into its most imposing form under the pon- 
tificate of Gregory VI, was neither an 
original nor a Christian type of civilization. 

21 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

It was the reproduction of Roman civiliza- 
tion wearing the robes of Christian nomen- 
clature. The crusades were the reacting of 
imperial Roman's military campaigns, in- 
spired by a romantic religious delusion. The 
mailed knights were unconscious mimics of 
the Roman legions. A resurrected Roman 
empire was the ambitious dream which made 
Napoleon crucify Europe on the calvaries of 
Wagram, Linden, and Areola. Germany's 
militaristic frenzy was the flaring up again 
of Rome's old dream of world dominion, 
even the head dress of the German soldier 
being an imitation of the helmets of the men 
who crossed the Rubicon with Caesar. Nietz- 
sche's "Superman" is the old Csesar wor- 
ship, thinly disguised. What is civilization? 
History has three disinct and independent 
answers: the Hebrew ideal of morality, the 
Grecian ideal or culture, the Roman ideal or 
power. 

Christian civilization is an unrealized 
dream, an ideal which has never become a 
historical reality. Such is not to deny that 
the Christian religion has been expressed in 
individual lives and historical movements. 



MEANING OF CIVILIZATION 

P. Carnegie Simpson, in his book The Fact 
of Christ, portrays his conception of a Chris- 
tian as one who is responding to whatever 
meanings of Christ are, through God's 
Spirit, being brought home to his intellectual 
or moral conscience. This approaches a very 
satisfactory definition; it is exhaustive 
enough to include the essentials of personal 
Christianity, and workable enough to be 
used as a measure of the Christianity of the 
individual. Judged by this definition, there 
have lived on this earth persons who have 
measured well up to the standard. Christ 
has never been without his true representa- 
tives since he vanished from the eyes of men 
in the glory of Olivet. These are the lights 
which for eighteen centuries have saved the 
race from spiritual darkness. They are the 
nobility of the kingdom of God, the stars in 
Heaven's Service Flag, the salt of the earth 
which has kept it from falling to pieces of its 
own fetidness. 

"Saints of the early dawn of Christ, 
Saints of Imperial Rome, 
Saints of the mart and busy streets, 
Saints of the modern home, 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

Saints of the soft and sunny East, 

Saints of the frozen seas, 
Saints of the isles that wave their palms 

In the far Antipodes, 
Saints who were wafted to the skies 

In martyr's robes of flame, 
Saints who have graven on men's thoughts 

A monumental name." 1 

But the continuous presence of individual 
Christians on earth does not argue a Chris- 
tian civilization. Christianity, whether ex- 
pressed by the individual or the group, has 
ever been at variance with the world. The 
Christian has never been typical of any civil- 
ization in which he has lived. He is not a 
product of any historical civilization, but, 
rather, a transplanted plant whose vitality 
is such that it will flourish in any soil. Of 
such the Master's words have ever been true : 
"They are not of the world, even as I am 
not of the world." Whenever the Christian 
has sought to conform to his age, like Demas, 
he "has departed, having loved this present 
world." The real moral and spiritual rela- 

1 "The Facts of Conversion," George W. Jackson. By per- 
mission of The Fleming H. Revell Publishing Company. 
24 



MEANING OF CIVILIZATION 

tion of any individual Christian to his age is 
expressed by the petition of Jesus: "I pray 
not that thou shouldst take them out of the 
world, but that thou shouldst keep them 
from evil." Christian people with reference 
to every age in history since the first century 
have been "they of Caesar's household," 
idealists who of necessity maintained com- 
mercial and political affiliations with society, 
but whose real interests were apart. A true 
disciple of Jesus is no more a product of the 
world of yesterday or to-day than was Saint 
John an embodiment of decadent Judaism, 
or Saint Paul of the Roman empire. The 
follower of the Man of Galilee has ever been 
a stranger and pilgrim on earth, wistfully 
looking "for a city which hath foundations, 
whose builder and maker is God." So will 
he continue to be until the dream of a Chris- 
tian civilization becomes a social reality. 

As Christianity has succeeded with the in- 
dividual, it has also succeeded in projecting 
itself through numerous groups and fre- 
quent historical movements. It would be a 
poor assumption to contend that any well- 
known religious movement or organization is 

25 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

a complete interpretation and representation 
of the life and teachings of the Son of man. 
Commenting on Jesus' s words to the woman 
of Samaria, "The hour cometh, and now is, 
when the true worshipers shall worship the 
Father in spirit and in truth," Renan, in his 
work The Life of Jesus, 1 says: "The day on 
which he uttered this saying he was truly 
the Son of God. He pronounced for the first 
time the sentence upon which will repose the 
edifice of eternal religion. He founded the 
pure worship of all ages, of all lands, which 
all elevated souls will practice till the end of 
time. Not only was his religion on this day 
the best religion of humanity; it was the 
absolute religion; and if other planets have 
inhabitants gifted with reason and morality, 
their religion cannot be different from that 
which Jesus proclaimed near the well of 
Jacob. This sentence of Jesus has been a 
brilliant light amidst the gross darkness; it 
has required eighteen centuries for mankind 
— nay, an indefinitely small portion of man- 
kind — to become accustomed to it." Chris- 
tianity is too profound to be understood 

1 By permission of Little, Brown & Co* 

26 



MEANING OF CIVILIZATION 

fully by any one group of men, too vast to 
be compassed by any one movement. 

But if churches, reformations, revival 
movements have been only "broken lights" 
of the Central Sun, they at least have often 
been true and kindly lights. Beyond dis- 
pute there are important phases of Chris- 
tianity which groups and movements have 
faithfully portrayed. The Franciscan move- 
ment was the emphasis on the social ideal of 
Christianity. Monasticism was the exag- 
geration of Christ's teachings concerning un- 
worldliness. The Wesleyan movement was 
an earnest, and by no means unsuccessful, 
effort to reproduce Pentecost by making re- 
ligion a personal experience. Quakerism 
was the attempt to express Christ's teachings 
on the simple and wholesome beauty of 
friendliness. It does not discredit the church 
that no one denomination adequately repre- 
sents the Christian religion. By many men, 
by various movements, by different denom- 
inations — each in a measure independent of 
the others, like the unknown miracle worker 
of the Gospels — different aspects of the 
truth were revealed until the essentials of 

n 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

the gospel of Christ have come to the knowl- 
edge of men. But when all credit is given 
where credit is due, when all has been said 
that can be said of the use which the world 
has made of Christianity, with profound rev- 
erence for those holy lives which are "Christ 
in miniature," and deep respect for every 
organization and social influence of which 
Jesus Christ has been the inspiration, still it 
is painfully apparent that Christianity has 
never molded any age into a Christian civil- 
ization. Looking backward we fail to find a 
chapter on Christian civilization written by 
the achievements of the past. Looking about 
us in the present, we discover that in the 
fabric of modern life only here and there 
by broken threads can we trace the influence 
of Christian ideals. Looking forward, 
what do we anticipate? For what may we 
hope? 



28 



CHAPTER II 

WHAT IS MODERN CIVILIZA- 
TION? 

Having referred to the conspicuous 
epochs of history with a view of clarifying 
the definition of civilization, we may turn 
to our own age with the question, "What 
is modern civilization?" What are the con- 
spicuous traits of our times? What charac- 
ter is the present generation giving to the 
age in which we live ? How will the historian 
of the future label the civilization of which 
the man of to-day is the type? An objec- 
tive answer is readily found. Modern 
America! Whatever the character of mod- 
ern civilization may be, America is its most 
representative national type. Our country 
is the most typical and cosmopolitan nation 
on earth. It is a cross-section of the modern 
world. The United States of America is 
the twentieth century nationalized. To 
know the controlling force in American life 

29 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

is to have a key to the meaning of modern 
civilization. What is the American ideal? 

These are questions which are not readily- 
answered, questions which perhaps are not 
yet ready to yield an answer. The threads 
woven into the intricate fabric of modern 
life are of such variety of shade and color 
that it is not easy to determine its prevailing 
color. We hear so many voices, each claim- 
ing to be official, that we are uncertain as to 
whose is the authoritative voice. A multi- 
tude of preachers are proclaiming, but whose 
voice is the voice of the age? There are so 
many strong and apparently unrelated 
forces pouring into the channel of modern 
civilization that the most careful observer is 
uncertain as to the direction of the main cur- 
rent, or whether there be a main current. 
There are so many clashing ideals, each as- 
suming the championship of the truth, that 
we are at a loss to recognize the representa- 
tive ideal. 

During the early days of the war prophe- 
cies were rife proclaiming the beneficent ef- 
fect of the world conflict upon contemporary 
society. It was said that the war was a 
30 



MODERN CIVILIZATION 

school wherein humanity would learn at last 
a hitherto neglected and unforgettable les- 
son. Moralists argued that the present gen- 
eration, having witnessed the collapse of a 
civilization built on the foundation of com- 
mercialism, would rebuild modern life on the 
basis of ethical fundamentals. The pulpit, 
assuming the role of the prophet — without 
the prophet's vision — pointed to a coming 
revival of religion which was soon to sweep 
over the race, carrying away the chaff and 
leaving the sweet, wholesome grain of true 
and undefiled religion. The widespread fel- 
lowship of suffering was diagnosed as the 
birth pangs of a regenerate humanity. 
Above the flames of battle was seen the 
vision of a nobler manhood, crowned with a 
spiritual halo. Scores of volumes were writ- 
ten on the contribution of the war to Chris- 
tianity. Phrases were coined and eagerly 
caught up by visionaries, showing that the 
men who had been in battle had undergone a 
fiery baptismal regeneration. Preachers 
waxed eloquent on "The Religion of the 
Soldier" and "The Christianity in the 
Trenches." We saw men throwing their 

31 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

fortunes and lives into the roaring furnace 
of war with an abandon that was magnifi- 
cent. We felt sure that by such costly refin- 
ing process the dross of human nature was 
being consumed, and that out of the flames 
would come the pure ore of Christianity. 
Rudyard Kipling, whose fame does not rest 
upon a friendly feeling for Americans, de- 
clared as we entered the war that America 
had found her soul. Lord Northcliffe, com- 
menting upon President Wilson's speech 
before Congress in which he voiced our coun- 
try's declaration of war, said that never be- 
fore had a nation entered into war on 
grounds so purely idealistic. Many believed 
that the war was a fierce but purifying flame 
which would renovate the race. It was con- 
fidently asserted that all superficiality would 
be burned away, and that the near future 
would be translated into an age of spiritual 
realism. 

Alas! We have been woefully deceived. 
If the war has had an ennobling influence 
on the man of to-day, it is not apparent. If 
society has been renovated, the results of the 
cleansing process are not strikingly obvious. 
32 



MODERN CIVILIZATION 

If humanity to-day is wearing the sack- 
cloth of penitence for past sins and follies, 
like Jehoram when Benhadad besieged 
Samaria, its sackcloth is hidden. If a uni- 
versal revival of spiritual religion is at hand, 
its approach has not been heralded by 
tongues of fire or mighty rushing winds of 
idealism. We still await the impressive 
spectacle of vast throngs taking the kingdom 
of God by violence. However the war may 
have improved the maps of Europe and 
Asia, its beneficent effect on the individual 
and society as a whole seems to be more 
imaginary than real. Now that the war is 
behind us, what has become of the religion 
of the soldier? What spiritual contribu- 
tion is being made by the man whom the 
war metamorphosed into a saint in khaki? 
Has the fine idealism of a nation which 
"found its soul" been conserved? There is 
abundant evidence that all of the old has not 
passed way, and that all things have not yet 
been made satisfactorily new. Apparently, 
the only effect of the war on human nature 
has been to magnify and draw in sharper 
contrasts different human types. The 

33 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

money-worshiper displayed himself as the 
"profiteer"; the sensualist plunged into an 
orgy of dissipation; the spendthrift revelled 
in unchecked prodigality; while the idealist 
proclaimed more insistently than ever that 
man cannot live by bread alone and has 
steadfastly refused to sell his birthright for a 
mess of pottage. The war did not mate- 
rially change modern society as much as re- 
veal the kind of ideals which make up our 
civilization. 

The complexity of modern life lies in its 
expression of ideals rather than in the variety 
of its ideals. Every phase of activity in the 
modern world — social, political, scientific, 
religious — is consciously or unconsciously a 
manifestation of one or two masterful ideals 
of life. The ad infinitum of the plural num- 
ber would be taxed to catalogue the perform- 
ances of our age; the dual number is suffi- 
cient to classify its ideals. One of these may 
be represented by the greatly overworked 
and often wrongly used term materialism. 
The legitimate use of this word is not to 
make it a synonym of the sneer of the im- 
practical religionist at commercial success 
34 



MODERN CIVILIZATION 

or mechanical progress. In its broader and 
proper sense it is that philosophy which seeks 
the ultimate worth of life within the sphere 
of the senses, and denies any reality beyond 
the horizon of the physical universe, an inter- 
pretation of life which is of the earth most 
earthy. Wherever it has touched, it has be- 
fouled humanity. Its measure of business 
success is not the kind of service rendered, 
but the widest margin of profits. The mate- 
rialist's ideal of an educational institution 
is a factory which turns out human parts to 
fit into our great commercial machinery 
rather than a school which makes for man- 
hood and develops personality. The mate- 
rialist supports reform movements, like the 
prohibition of the manufacture and sale of 
alcoholic drinks and injurious drugs, not 
from altruistic motives and conscientious 
convictions, but because habits that impair 
the body and cloud the brain weaken the 
links in the industrial chain. A decade 
ago W. L. Watkinson, an eminent English 
clergyman, complained of the Temperance 
Movement in England that the incon- 
venience and costliness of it were the chief 

35 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

items of consideration, and that a favorite 
argument in this crusade was the financial 
gain of sobriety. Not infrequently the ma- 
terialist is a stanch church member who, if 
unconscious of the spiritual significance of 
the church, is astute enough to perceive that 
such an institution restrains lawlessness and 
furnishes additional police protection to his 
bonds and warehouses, and on the whole 
helps to make the city a comfortable and se- 
cure place in which to live. The so-called 
failure of the church — a failure more to its 
credit than discredit — is, to a large extent, 
its refusal to conform to standards of 
worldly success. 

"Suggestions are being made," writes Dr. 
J. H. Jowett in an American religious peri- 
odical, "on every side as to how the decrepit 
weakling, the church, can be revived and re- 
cover a vigorous health and strength. And 
here are some of the suggestions: Permit 
smoking in the back pews ! Let the services 
share the character of the free-and-easy serv- 
ices of the hut lif e at the front ! Shorten the 
sermon! Abolish the sermon! Bring the 
entire service within the compass of an hour, 
36 



MODERN CIVILIZATION 

or better still half an hour! Make use of 
the cinematograph! Don't be afraid of the 
drama! Etc., etc." All of which simply 
means : Convert the altar into a stage and the 
chapel into an amusement hall! It is sensu- 
alism inserting itself into institutional Chris- 
tianity. 

In social life this materialistic ideal re- 
veals itself as a sort of twentieth-century 
epicureanism, without the refinement of the 
Epicureans. It is witnessed in the laxity of 
standards of conduct, the flexibility of moral 
convictions, the playing of fast and loose 
with the marriage bond, the popularity of 
vulgar amusements, the loss of reverence, the 
mood of trifling with holy things, reckless in- 
dulgence stimulated by a mad chase after 
purely physical sensations. It is the mimicry 
of the court life of Belshazzar. Ancient 
Babylon in the most voluptuous period of her 
existence is the historical illustration of so- 
ciety resting upon a materialistic founda- 
tion. Is our civilization a reproduction of 
Babylon? If so, the sooner the handwriting 
appears on the wall the better it will be for 
the good of the world and the future of the 

37 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

race. Apparently, the materialistic ideal is 
the dominant force in American life to-day. 
If the apparent is a symptom of real disease, 
is this disease an ill to which the civilization 
on the western hemisphere will succumb? 

If the materialistic ideal represents one 
side of our modern life, the other side is rep- 
resented by the Christian ideal. The ad- 
jective is chosen advisedly, for it is suffi- 
ciently inclusive to represent the finest 
idealism of the human race. Christianity 
epitomizes the best for which mankind has 
struggled through all the centuries; and the 
sincerity of a person's idealism is his rating 
as a Christian. John Wesley, after reading 
the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, con- 
fided these words to his diary: "I doubt not 
but that this is one of these who shall come 
from the East and West and sit down with 
Abraham in his kingdom." And who can 
doubt that had Socrates, Plato, Buddha, 
Virgil been among those who heard the 
Sermon on the Mount they would have felt 
what Nicodemus acknowledged: "Rabbi, we 
know that thou art a teacher come from 
God"? 

38 



MODERN CIVILIZATION 

What is this philosophy of life that we 
call Christianity, this attitude toward the 
universe which is at once morally exclusive 
and inclusive? What is Christianity? The 
question has produced the greatest body of 
literature, both in quantity and quality, out- 
side of the Bible. Saints and sages have rev- 
erently and wisely given themselves to the 
task of explaining it. Monumental theo- 
logical treatises like Saint Augustine's City 
of God, a Kempis's Imitation of Christ, 
Bishop Butler's Analogy, Martineau's Seat 
of Authority in Religion; works of poetic 
genius like Dante's "Inferno," Milton's 
"Paradise Lost," Browning's "Paracelsus," 
Lanier's "Crystal," and in our own day 
Francis Thompson's "Hound of Heaven"; 
masterful sermons, from St. Chrysostom's 
to Horace Bushnell's; hymns with words 
majestic enough to be sung to the music of 
the spheres, as Venantius Fortunatus's 
"Welcome, Happy Morning"; Bernard of 
Clairvaux's "Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving 
Hearts"; Faber's "There's a Wideness in 
God's Mercy"; Newman's "Lead, Kindly 
Light" ; Charles Wesley's "Jesus, Lover of 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

My Soul" are all efforts made by the most 
gifted and reverent among the sons of the 
race to express the depth and height and 
breadth of the riches of God in Christ. 
Christianity is a mine of wealth which has 
never been exhausted by human wisdom. It 
can neither be defined in words nor confined 
by creeds and canons. 

If the philosophy of the Christian religion 
is too profound to be sounded by any one 
mind or one sect, the teachings of Chris- 
tianity concerning the right attitude of man 
toward life are unmistakable. Christianity 
teaches that there are two worlds, the one 
visible and transient, the other invisible and 
eternal, and that while man is by nature a 
citizen of both worlds, his relation to the in- 
visible is primary, and his relation to the vis- 
ible, though real, is of secondary importance. 
Christianity does not classify the two worlds 
as good and evil, but grades them accord- 
ing to their relative values. One is a goodly 
pearl, the other is a pearl of great price. The 
spiritual world is the house whose founda- 
tions are laid in the unseen and imperishable ; 
the visible is the scaffolding which at best is 

40 



MODERN CIVILIZATION 

of a temporary character. Christianity 
argues, therefore, that while the scaffolding 
is important in the building of the house, if 
a man is wise, he is more concerned with the 
house than the auxiliary structure. It is an 
act of wisdom rather than duty to seek first 
the kingdom of God and his righteousness. 
A person shows prudence rather than virtue 
who is incidentally interested in laying up 
treasures "on earth, where moth and rust 
doth corrupt," but is diligent in laying up 
treasures in heaven "where neither moth nor 
rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not 
break through nor steal." It is self-preser- 
vation rather than self-sacrifice to "fear not 
them which kill the body, . . . but rather 
fear him which is able to destroy both soul 
and body in hell." To pluck out an offend- 
ing eye is surgery that saves rather than self- 
imposed discipline. The rich young ruler 
who refused to exchange his riches for treas- 
ures in heaven was stupid rather than sin- 
ful. The use that man has for the visible 
world is the use that a soldier has for a train- 
ing camp, a place where he prepares for a 
realm of activity. A Christian's interest in 

41 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

the physical is that it should be a means to a 
greater end. The constructing of a perfect 
social order on earth is the mission of Chris- 
tianity in so far as such a consummation as- 
sists man in his spiritual development. The 
kingdom of God on earth for which the Mas- 
ter taught men to pray is the necessary result 
of people living together in the right way 
because they have first established their citi- 
zenship in heaven. Christianity is not a doc- 
trine of misty otherworldliness but a sane 
and practical connecting of man with both 
spheres of his existence. The non- Christian 
is one who inverts these relations. Jesus was 
the sanest Man who has ever lived on earth. 
Christianity is the counter-ideal of mate- 
rialism in modern civilization; and its influ- 
ence in our age, while less objectively con- 
spicuous, is as evident as the influence of the 
materialistic ideal. Despite the prolonged 
siege of hostile criticism, the superior scorn 
of the morally neutral, and the treachery 
from within its ranks, the church, above all 
other institutions, philanthropic and hu- 
mane, is identified with the Christian reli- 
gion. It is not contended that that church is 



MODERN CIVILIZATION 

a perfect expression of Christianity; its prac- 
tice is too often far below its professions. 
But it is significant that it has a place in our 
social order, a place apparently as secure as 
the home or the state. Its place is secure 
because, theoretically at least, it represents 
the true Christian ideal. An ideal repre- 
sented by a historical institution which the 
better element of society insists is indispen- 
sable argues a society powerfully influenced 
by the Christian ideal of life. Beyond de- 
nial, Christianity is a vigorous and far-reach- 
ing force in our age. 

Whether the dominant ideal of the age be 
materialistic or Christian is an open ques- 
tion. Both of these forces exhibit marked 
strength. But though we may classify the 
quality of each ideal, their divergent influ- 
ences cannot be tabulated with sufficient ac- 
curacy to form a conclusion as to their rela- 
tive strength. Suffice it to say that neither 
concedes the victory to the other. Each is 
strongly fortified, each aggressive, each con- 
fident of final triumph. 

The modern man hears two voices, one 
saying: "Let us tear down our barns and 

43 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

build greater ones," the other asking, "What 
doth it profit a man if he gain the whole 
world and lose his own soul?" The world 
to-day is the battlefield of Armageddon, 
where two hostile and irreconcilable forces, 
after centuries of mobilization, have met in 
desperate conflict. In this world war there 
are no neutrals, the lines are clearly drawn, 
the fight is on. How goes the battle? 
Watchman, what of the night? 



44 



CHAPTER III 
THE TEMPER OF THE TIMES 

A prophecy of the permanent effects on 
modern life of either the materialistic or 
Christian ideal would be highly conjectural 
without previous consideration of the temper 
of our age. The race, like the individual, 
has its moods. History is as whimsical as 
biography. Eventful decades show as great 
a temperamental variety as the different per- 
sons we know. Our age has its mood no less 
than the days of the French Revolution. 
Whatever this mood may be, that ideal to 
which it is most congenial has a strategic ad- 
vantage over its opponents. If the mood of 
the age is impartial, then neither materialism 
nor Christianity occupies an advantageous 
position, the success of either over the other 
being dependent upon the relative virility of 
the contending forces. 

As the temper of a person is indicated by 
the method rather than the nature of his ac- 

45 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

tions, so the spirit of an age is reflected by 
the manner rather than the character of its 
performances. The pulse beat of our times 
registers a temper of pronounced restless- 
ness. The earth tremor of human unrest is 
felt by all. The most sanguine of statesmen 
refuse to see in the newly made map of 
Europe more than temporary equilibrium. 
The wheels of industry revolve spasmodi- 
cally. The ship of state is tossed on the tur- 
bulent waters of social unrest. In education 
the multiformity of ideals is symptomatic of 
an unfixed standard of mental training, one 
American university having substituted as 
a qualification for admission to its courses 
the quality of untrained intelligence of an 
applicant in place of prescribed preliminary 
studies. Even the church, which ought to be 
a stabilizer of people's moods in uncertain 
times, has been infected by the general rest- 
lessness, and is spending much of its energy 
in a nervous pursuit after many non-essen- 
tials, neglecting "the one thing needful." 
The world of to-day is uncertain of itself. 
The temper of the modern man is an epi- 
tome of the universal mood. He is a stranger 

46 



THE TEMPER OF THE TIMES 

to the tranquil philosophy of Saint Paul: 
"I know how to be abased, and I know how 
to abound." "I have learned, in whatever 
state I am, to be content." Whether abased 
or "abounding" the individual of contem- 
porary times is discontented with himself. 
He is busy pulling down his old barns and 
buildings larger ones, but his soul is ill at 
ease, nervously asking, "What lack I yet?" 
He builds for himself a dwelling place of 
magnificent proportions, furnishes it with 
luxurious appointments, and is disillusioned 
because it does not call out to him: "Come 
unto me, and I will give you rest." Me- 
chanical ingenuity has been taxed in the 
invention of labor-saving devices, but they 
have failed to ease our yokes of worry or 
lighten our burdens of care. To-day man 
moves from place to place with miraculous 
speed, sailing through the air, rolling over 
the ground, moving under the sea, and in- 
deed gauging his every activity to the great- 
est possible rapidity. We work, play, and 
pray under the whiplash of hurry. But in 
our reflective moments we face the satirical 
question of the hero of Bojer's novel The 

47 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

Great Hunger, ' 'Where are we going that 
we are in such a hurry?" The modern young 
man and young woman are over sophisti- 
cated, and wonder why life has lost its zest 
and romance. They hunt for thrills in 
travel, fantastic amusements, overdone col- 
ors, and glaring lights. We loudly boast of 
our progress and fill the future with ever- 
enlarging plans, but are uncertain whether 
our progress means real achievement or a 
tower of Babel with its confusion of tongues 
and noisy contentions. The man of to-day 
is strenuously energetic, thoroughly efficient, 
eagerly progressive, and very unhappy. He 
has gained the whole world and is dissatis- 
fied with his possessions. 

The cause of this general unrest is not 
difficult to trace. For one thing, the modern 
man has broken with the authority of the 
past, and has accepted no new master. Never 
were men so contemptuous of authority. 
Political constitutions, scientific dictums, 
ethical decalogues, ecclesiastical canons are 
no longer formidable. The pilots of state 
refuse to steer by the old harbor lights of 
historical precedents. Political science has 

48 



THE TEMPER OF THE TIMES 

thrown into the discard many of its funda- 
mental tenets. The air is rent with the 
strident shouts of factional tongues, each 
crying, "I am the state." The doctrines of 
the rights and authority of government, in- 
herited from our forefathers, are being rele- 
gated to political museums. Science, wid- 
ening the horizon of the universe, subdivid- 
ing matter, discovering new and unsuspected 
forces, has set the human mind speculating 
as to the immutability of nature's laws. The 
Einstein theory of "relativity" is casting sus- 
picion on the supposed changeless element in 
certain physical laws, hitherto considered 
fixed or even axiomatic. Physical science, 
which was wont to sneer at the f allibility of 
theology, is growing suspicious of its own 
infallibility. 

In the sphere of moral government exter- 
nal authority is decidedly unpopular. The 
Ten Commandments are subordinated to 
the individual conscience. Old-fashioned 
distinctions of right and wrong are consid- 
ered presumptuous and arbitrary. A con- 
tributor to the Fortnightly Review, discuss- 
ing what he terms "Scientific Sin," argued 

49 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

that the error of overprizing the truth is 
quite common, that there are many who seem 
positively to worship the truth, as if truth 
were the essence of all goodness, and that the 
duty of lying is a painful and uncommon 
duty, yet a duty which had to be seriously 
considered. A similar attitude toward ethi- 
cal precepts is expressed by another writer, 
who contends that morality is a matter of 
social discipline, and not an inherent princi- 
ple in nature like the law of gravitation, 
but a sort of agreement arrived at by nations 
and communities for the better regulation of 
their affairs. A code of ethics for commer- 
cial convenience is a wide departure from the 
emphatic, "Thou shalt!" and "Thou shalt 
not!" of biblical authority. In the moral 
world the old order has been reversed, the 
individual conscience being exalted at the 
expense of inherited moral traditions. 

Our age is likewise resentful of authority 
in religion. Extreme individualism snatches 
the crown of authority from organized Chris- 
tianity. Canons, dogmas, doctrines for 
which emperors once convened councils and 
kings went to war are received or rejected 

50 



THE TEMPER OF THE TIMES 

with equal facility. Religious beliefs which 
were once held as fixed and unalterable are 
regarded as old-fashioned religious clothes, 
interesting but long since out of date. "The 
faith once delivered to the saints" was well 
enough for the saints, but, really, the saints 
were rather credulous people. In place of 
the great creeds of the church which tell 
what God taught men at Bethlehem under 
the Christmas stars, amid the unspeakable 
radiance of the transfiguration, under the 
Olive leaves of Gethsemane, in the heart- 
breaking hour of Calvary, and in the glory 
of Easter morning, we have substituted our 
penny-page philosophies and pink-tea the- 
ologies. There was no more pitiable com- 
mentary imaginable on the spiritual poverty 
of modern times than the spectacle of grief- 
burdened men and women crowding about 
ouija boards and reverently listening to 
table-rappings. Having turned his back on 
the pillar of cloud and fire, the man of to-day 
is wandering aimlessly in the wilderness. We 
have mistaken rebellion for independence, 
and fancy that we are free because we 
have lost our way. Having broken with the 

51 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

authority of the past, we are restless, not 
knowing whither to go. This very uneasi- 
ness is the unadmitted confession of a search 
for a Lord and Master. 

The spirit of restlessness is furthered by 
the obvious superficiality of our age. We 
have built our houses on the sand and live on 
the surface of life, hence we are uneasy 
because the waters are troubled. We move 
quickly enough, but it is the mobility of 
light craft in the shallows. Many of our 
achievements are of colossal proportions, 
but a colossus with feet of clay. We 
are more emotional than thoughtful. We 
have invested so heavily in the material 
that we are in danger of spiritual bank- 
ruptcy. We are ready to indorse any move- 
ment wearing the badges of philanthropy 
and religion, but we lack serious conviction. 
The late Maud Powell, the brilliant violin 
virtuoso, referring to successful American 
workers in the field of art, said: "There are 
more liveliness and high spirits than of spir- 
ituality. We do not live deeply enough. 
We depend too much on the big outer stimu- 
lus to rouse us. We must be turned away 



THE TEMPER OF THE TIMES 

from the things that we possess to a deeper 
inner life." The inner lights burn dimly, 
and "If the light within be darkness, how 
great is that darkness !" Living on the sur- 
face of life, we are subject to disturbing sur- 
face conditions. 

An additional reason for modern uneasi- 
ness lies in the fact that ours is a period of 
rapid and radical transition. In a very real 
sense every age is an age of transition. 
History is ever ringing out the old and 
ringing in the new. Times of peace and 
tranquillity are changing times no less than 
years of storm and stress. It is more than 
a poetic fancy, it is the statement of an 
inevitable process, that the world moves for- 
ever "down the ringing grooves of change." 
The periods which are designated as normal 
times are those changes which, like the sea- 
sons, take place gradually, imperceptibly, 
and which give men time for unconscious 
adjustment. In normal times there is 
apparently greater political stability, more 
clearly defined ethical standards, and reli- 
gion speaks in stronger tones of authority. 
But the process of change which our age is 

53 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

undergoing is abrupt and far reaching. We 
have found ourselves thrust violently into a 
new and unfamiliar world, a world of strange 
social forces, new political alignments, un- 
tried rules of conduct, unfamiliar religious 
impulses. The twentieth century is a shock- 
ing innovator. It has struck established 
customs with such an impact that many of 
the traditional landmarks have been shaken 
down. There are not wanting prophets who 
are saying that there is a spirit abroad in the 
earth, strong, desperate, maddened, which, 
like Samson, will not stop until it has pulled 
down the pillars of every time-honored social 
institution. 

Times of transition are times that come to 
destroy as well as to fulfill. When such 
times are characterized by changes of kalei- 
doscopic rapidity the destructive forces are 
more apparent than the constructive, and for 
a time more powerful and numerous. When 
the air is filled with the dust and noise of 
wrecking machinery, we are inclined to ask, 
dubiously, "Of this great temple of civiliza- 
tion, shall one stone be left standing upon 
another?" Ours is a distracted age. The 
54 



THE TEMPER OF THE TIMES 

world mood is one of restlessness and 
anxiety. Though the causes of this distrac- 
tion are not too remote to be ascertained, yet 
the possibilities of such a mood are uncertain. 
Analysis is surer than prophecy. Even 
when the symptoms are unmistakable the 
outcome is problematical. Nature has her 
surprises which upset all human calculations. 
Tennyson "dipped into the future far as 
human eye could see/' and the world has wit- 
nessed his rhetoric scientifically fulfilled: 

"The heavens filled with shouting, 
And there rained a ghastly dew, 
From the nations airy navies, 
Grappling in the central blue." 

But chemistry, steel, electricity furnish 
surer materials for exact prophecy than does 
human nature. Long ago the wise and sor- 
rowful Jeremiah confessed himself mystified 
by the subject, and reached the conclusion 
that "the heart is deceitful above all things 
. . . Who can know it?" As there lurks in 
every person a madman or a philosopher, a 
saint or a demon, so society is a possible mob 
or a chivalrous order, a wrecker or a builder, 

55 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

anarchy or a state, a renegade humanity or 
a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwell- 
eth righteousness. When human nature is 
most uncertain of itself it is most easily in- 
fluenced. Where conviction is wanting, per- 
suasion has its opportunity. A restless age 
is a plastic age. The mood of our times has 
surrendered to neither good nor evil; it 
presents each with an opportunity for con- 
quest. While it is yet pliable, neither the 
good nor the evil has the advantage over the 
other. One may hope, the other may beware. 



56 



CHAPTER IV 
A DEFINITE TYPE INEVITABLE 

The present is a time of indefinite social 
ideals, flexible moral standards, vague re- 
ligious faith, and therefore an age of easy 
tolerance. Any philosophy of life can find 
a footing, any creed can gain some believers, 
any puppet prophet can have a hearing, 
every temple has its worshipers. Like the 
men of Athens, whom Paul addressed from 
Mars' Hill, we have set up altars to all the 
gods, known and unknown. We respond to 
the winds of all the doctrines which are 
blowing. We would profit by heeding Car- 
lyle's advice concerning the attempt to ap- 
propriate the universe: "Attempt not to 
swallow it, for thy logical digestion; be 
thankful, if skillfully planting down this and 
the other fixed pillar in the chaos, thou pre- 
vent it swallowing thee." 

Nothing shocks us very much because we 
are so morally and religiously elastic. Or- 

57 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

thodoxy and heresy are distinctions which 
are more imaginary than real. The "de- 
fender of the faith" no longer persecutes his 
heretical brother; he is merely passively 
interested in what his brother thinks. In 
human society the radical and the reaction- 
ary receive equal consideration; indeed, we 
are not sure which is which. Innovations 
interest us; they do not annoy us. The 
modern man is rarely shocked by moral va- 
riations. When he is confronted by an 
innovation, instead of striking the inflexible 
body of his convictions and producing a 
ringing protest, it sinks quietly and without 
friction into the yielding clay of an easy 
tolerance. The man of to-day is too ethi- 
cally pliable to feel the vibration of a jarring 
impact. 

The desirability of tolerance is always 
conditional. The needful truth for an age 
is often the truth which that age has forgot- 
ten, neglected, or suppressed. When reli- 
gious ardor is expressed by persecutions, 
inquisitions, sectarian bigotry, and acrimo- 
nious doctrinal battles, the gospel of toler- 
ance is the gospel for the hour. When men 
58 



A DEFINITE TYPE 

insist that the ascetic life is the only way of 
salvation and that the soul is in peril when- 
ever the doors of desires are unlocked, then 
blessed be that truth which leads man forth 
from dark monastic walls into God's bright 
world of trees, flowers, love, and sunshine. 
When religious teachers are most certain 
that man's knowledge of God is limited to 
one age and race, or that Christ speaks to 
the world only over the private wire of a 
historic incarnation, it is well to think of 
Paul's words: "I perceive that God is no 
respecter of persons," and to believe that 

"The heathen hands, and helpless, 
Groping blindly in the darkness, 
Touch God's right hand in the darkness, 
And are lifted up and strengthened." 

But when bigotry melts into flaccidity, when 
the sensual supplants the ascetic, when men 
would tear down all the moral walls of the 
kingdom of God, and obliterate all ethical 
and religious distinctions, a gospel of toler- 
ance is not only untimely but positively 
injurious. 

The conditions which make for tolerance 
59 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

to-day are neither surprising nor unnatural. 
The present is a dramatically transitional 
period in modern history, and in the process 
of swift change from an old to a new order 
a plastic condition of society is inevitable. 
The old vessel has been melted, and the 
molten material has not yet shaped itself into 
the form of a new vessel. For a while it is 
soft and pliable, and is responsive to the 
touch of any force or influence. Our age 
has not taken a definite shape; it is neither 
the form of Beelzebub nor the image of an 
angel; it is shapeless. Out of the plastic 
stuff the potter's hand of destiny has not yet 
molded a new and distinct type of civiliza- 
tion. The present has not stiffened into a 
fixed historical form. This indeterminate 
state is a cause for anxiety. It gives ground 
for both hope and fear ; hope, because being 
yet plastic, it may be shaped into the image 
of the divine ; fear, because being still shape- 
less, it may take the form of evil. 

"The rudiments of empire here 

Are plastic yet, and warm; 

The chaos of a mighty world. 

Is rounding into form." 

60 



A DEFINITE TYPE 

"The chaos of a mighty world" is an oppor- 
tune phrase. It is very expressive of our 
great unshaped world to-day. But chaos, 
however far-reaching and thorough-going, 
is only momentary. Revolutions play their 
part and cease to be. After awhile heresies 
are no longer disturbing ; they are either ac- 
cepted or pass on and are forgotten. The 
significance of a human upheaval is not in its 
immediate action but in its ultimate result, 
not in its cyclonic movements but its per- 
manent influence upon the world life. The 
surgical operation is incidental in itself, the 
momentous question is whether the patient 
succumbs or survives. The discordant notes 
flung into the air are important only as they 
are the prelude to the composition which fol- 
lows. It is the composition that matters ; the 
inharmonious introduction is incidental. 
Into what kind of harmony will the twen- 
tieth-century discords be gathered? A 
Hymn of Hate, or a Hymn of Praise, a 
Halleluj ah Chorus or a De Prof undis ? The 
importance of the present mood of the world 
is its connection with the future life of the 
world. Our age of pliable clay must settle 

61 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

into a distinct and permanent mold. We 
must soon have a fixed and unalterable place 
in history. The twentieth century is to be 
an everlasting monument to something, for 
better or for worse. 

With society, as with the individual, the 
oft-quoted saying is true, that actions form 
habits, habits determine character, and 
character crystallizes into destiny. As 
the character of a society is the aggregate 
of the kind of individuals composing it, it 
behooves the individual to study his own acts 
and examine his own habits. The effect of 
the individual life upon social life is of more 
than passing moment or transient influence. 
Scientists teach that every noise, that of a 
falling stone or rippling water, starts wave 
sounds which reverberate forever. What the 
modern man is thinking and doing is of in- 
calculable future social consequence. What 
are we doing? What are we thinking? 
Whatever it is, we may be assured that it 
will have its permanent effect in shaping the 
kind of civilization into which the present 
age will inevitably settle. Goethe was wont 
to say: "Be careful, young man, what you 

m 



A DEFINITE TYPE 

pray for in youth, for you may receive it in 
old age." In this youth time of a new era 
it is well that we know what we seek in our 
task of reconstructing the world. Things 
are in the making, and if when civilization 
has assumed permanent form it is less grace- 
ful than we hoped, our regrets will be un- 
availing, like Esau, "who for one morsel of 
meat sold his birthright. For ye know that 
afterward, when he would have inherited the 
blessing, he was rejected: for he found no 
place of repentance, though he sought it 
carefully with tears." We need not be de- 
ceived into feeling that our acts and thoughts 
are of momentary importance, or that our 
lives are unrelated to human life as a whole. 
No man liveth or dieth unto himself. Each 
hand has some part in shaping the world. 
Writing of the degradation of French na- 
tional life which followed the reign of Louis 
XY, Carlyle argues that its causes were not 
primarily that of Philosophism which de- 
stroyed religion, not Turgot, not Necker, 
not the Queen's "want of etiquette," but 
"every scoundrel that had lived, and quack- 
like pretends to be doing, and been only 

63 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

eating and misdoing, in all provinces of life, 
Shoeblack or as Sovereign Lord, each in his 
degree, from the time of Charlemagne and 
earlier. All this (for be sure no falsehood 
perishes, but is as seed sown out to grow) has 
been storing itself for thousands of years; 
and now the account day has come. . . . O 
my brother, be not thou a Quack. Die 
rather, if thou wilt take counsel; 'tis dying 
once, and thou art quit of it forever." 

Into what form will the future crystallize 
the plasticity of the present? Will it return 
to some former type of civilization, or will it 
be something hitherto untried and unknown? 
Among the rife prophecies are the follow- 
ing: An international political order will 
be created, a sort of superstate with its 
armies and navies policing the world, and 
maintaining law and order. People will 
develop along national lines as before — 
although patriotism is at a low ebb just now. 
Our existing political institutions will be 
overthrown, and the world ruled by the pro- 
letariat. Moral traditions and restrictions 
will be thrown to the winds, and humanity 
will suffer the calamity of social atavism. 

64 



A DEFINITE TYPE 

There are other prophets, who either see- 
ing clearer or hoping better, feel that there 
might be a return to something like Puritan- 
ism. Dr. Parkes Cadman has tentatively 
expressed such an opinion. "If democracy," 
he says, "simply dissolves the multitudes into 
individuals to collect them again into mobs, 
I predict that Cromwellian Puritanism will 
once more become fashionable." 1 But mob 
violence is not sufficiently prevalent or dis- 
turbing to produce such political reaction. 
It is to be hoped, however, that our profligate 
conduct may react in the direction of the 
Puritan code of ethics. Sickened of sated 
appetites and overfed senses, people may 
turn in disgust from their tropical abandon- 
ment of feelings, and seek the purer if 
sterner uplands of austere living. The Puri- 
tan ideal is not the Christian ideal; it is 
nearer John the Baptist than Jesus, but our 
age is as foreign to Jesus as to John. The 
Puritan ideal, with its inflexible Sabbath, 
its hostility to laughter and song, its stern 
suppression of desires, bleak and frigid as it 
was, is preferable to the orgies of prodigality 

1 From a report in The Brooklyn Eagle, by permission. 

65 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

witnessed to-day on every hand. The Puri- 
tan is to be desired above the twentieth-cen- 
tury man-of-the world. The camel hair and 
wild honey of the wilderness is a finer moral 
environment than the court of Solomon. 

There are churchmen who think that they 
can see signs of an approaching civilization 
with religion as its predominant force. The 
belief may be born of hope, for the religious 
situation is too complex to hazard a safe 
prophecy. There is much religious activity 
and little religious thinking in the church 
to-day. There are mergers, movements, and 
organization enough, but religious serious- 
ness and depth of feeling are not so evident. 
Among the more thoughtful there is a pro- 
nounced interest and a certain wistful yearn- 
ing for spiritual realities. Such are seeking 
after God "if haply they may find him." 
Can it be that we are on the threshold of a 
distinctively religious age? Such a con- 
summation is devoutly to be wished. A 
religious age, however imperfect the expres- 
sion of religion may be, is more desirable 
than a nonreligious age. A religious age is 
always an age of serious living. Men are 
66 



A DEFINITE TYPE 

never so much in earnest as when most 
religious. 

Unless the pliant world life of modern 
times resolves itself into a civilization pro- 
foundly influenced by a divine purpose, it 
will be clay grotesquely marred by blind 
and purposeless forces. If after all the cen- 
turies of man's tenure of earth, after all the 
stern experiences of the race, after all the 
lessons which the past has tried to teach, 
we are not nearer a superior social order, 
humanity might with good reason despair 
of itself. Surely, man has lived long enough 
in this world to begin to learn to live well. 
We have been so busy demanding our rights 
from our fellow men that we have forgotten 
that ours is a spiritual lineage. Less in- 
sistence upon our rights as human beings, 
and a clearer realization of the dignity of 
divine sonship is a need of our age. True 
progressive social evolution is toward a 
theocracy rather than toward a democracy. 
The people need to hear the voice of God 
more than the world needs to hear the voice 
of the people. 

Whether or not a distinctively Christian 
67 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

era is an early prospect depends largely 
upon two factors, the degree of the modern 
man's interest in religion and the ability of 
Christianity to capitalize that interest. If 
there is a point of contact between Christian- 
ity and the man of to-day, it is in whatever 
interest in religion that man might have. If 
man is "incorrigibly religious," it is equally 
true that he is spasmodically religious. Cir- 
cumstances condition a person's susceptibil- 
ity to religious influences. When bereft of 
earthly happiness the human heart turns to 
religion for compensation. 

Since its beginning Christianity has found 
disciples among the poor, the sorrowful, the 
outcasts, the world-broken. The message 
which Jesus sent to John the Baptist in the 
fortress of Machserus explains the cause of 
the popularity of Christianity among the 
victims of life's battles: "Go your way, and 
tell John what things ye have seen and 
heard ; how the blind see, the lame walk, the 
lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the 
dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is 
preached." The religious message which 
can say with authority, "Come unto me, all 

68 



A DEFINITE TYPE 

ye who labor and are heavily laden, and I 
will give you rest," will always find follow- 
ers. Nevertheless, the class of people to 
whom religion is primarily a refuge from the 
storms of mortal existence is not the most 
influential class of society. Where the re- 
ligious interest of man is aroused only by 
hardships and sorrow the human area for the 
operation of Christianity is too restricted 
and uncertain to permeate the whole of so- 
ciety. There is a deal of truth in the state- 
ment that the history of a people is the 
history of her great men. Humanity walks 
in the footsteps of its leaders, and the leaders 
are not creatures easily broken by adversity. 
Those whom others instinctively follow are 
by nature too self-assertive and resourceful 
for their religious instincts to be stimulated 
by misfortune. Such natures usually grap- 
ple with and overcome their troubles or ac- 
cept them philosophically rather than seek 
relief in religious faith. 

The religious interests of vigorous per- 
sonalities capable of molding human senti- 
ment arise from other and deeper causes 
than personal affliction. Ian Maclaren said 

69 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

that if you would have a cause succeed, do 
not defend it in books, but link it up with a 
great personality and it will be successful. 
Every sweeping revolution, every epochal 
movement is associated with the names of 
commanding figures. The Reformation 
must needs have its Luther and its Melanch- 
thon; Puritanism its Cromwell and its Mil- 
ton; Methodism begins with its Wesleys. 
"An institution," writes Emerson, "is the 
lengthened shadow of a great man." The 
weak and unresisting never hold an influen- 
tial place in human society. The champions 
of early Christianity were men of tre- 
mendous virility and exceptional gifts. 
Among the twelve apostles there were lead- 
ers of unusual natural endowments and 
native strength of character. In the chosen 
three, Peter, James, and John, was em- 
bodied dynamic power which under the nec- 
essary stimulus would have made itself felt 
in any age and among all classes. Peter's 
masterful presence, impassioned fervor, and 
generalship in dealing with men would have 
made him a conspicuous figure in any arena 
of public life. James's practical sagacity, 

70 



A DEFINITE TYPE 

his organizing ability, and fine tact rate him 
as a potential commercial genius. The phil- 
osophical intellect of Saint John places him 
in the front rank of the great thinkers of the 
race. Gentile Christianity received a tre- 
mendous impetus in being championed by 
that many-sided genius the man of Tarsus. 
That early Christianity advanced with such 
conquering power was to no small degree 
due to the fact that many of the greatest 
men of the first and second centuries con- 
secrated their genius to the propagation of 
the new faith. Great causes demand great 
leaders. Great leaders demand great causes 
to champion. 

For the past half century the pulpit has 
been preaching the gospel of service and the 
mission of Christianity to the poor. Lazarus 
begging crumbs from the rich man's table 
has occupied the frontispiece of modern 
theology. We have almost come to think of 
the Christian religion exclusively as an up- 
lift movement. Despite the unquestionable 
claim which unfortunate humanity has upon 
the ministry of a "cup of cold water," there 
is no historic or ethical reason in limiting 

71 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

Christianity to a class religion. Christianity 
has been retarded as a powerful force in so- 
ciety because the church in these later days 
has neglected to make disciples of those who 
are in need neither of material assistance nor 
hygienic enlightenment. The time is at hand 
when the church must face the question, 
"What is the message of the Christian re- 
ligion to the strong?" The fittest are the 
sculptors or the iconoclasts of civilization. 
Puny hands neither destroy nor build. If 
the near future is to witness the overthrow 
of ancient institutions, the destruction will 
be the work of cyclonic forces. If a new age 
shall behold a Christian civilization shaped 
out of the mass of present conditions, it will 
largely be the work of consecrated power 
and dedicated genius. 



72 



CHAPTER V 

IS CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 
PRACTICAL? 

Is human society capable of being Chris- 
tianized? Can the leopard change his spots? 
Is there an angel of Christian civilization 
hidden beneath the unpromising exterior of 
the social life of man, or is the material too 
gross to be refined by the lofty idealism of 
the Man of Galilee ? Does the Christian .re- 
ligion offer salvation to the individual only? 
Is the relation of man to man essentially too 
complicated to be solved by the simplicity 
and beauty of the gospel precepts? 

That there have been true Christians in 
the world since the days that Jesus walked 
the earth is beyond question, people who 
have reproduced within their limitations the 
life of the Master. Among those who have 
written their names in Christlike characters 
on the honor roll of the centuries are apostles 
like Paul, monks like John of Damascus, 

73 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

kings like Alfred the Great, statesmen like 
Gladstone, soldiers like Robert E. Lee and 
General O. O. Howard, preachers like Phil- 
lips Brooks, and a countless host of men and 
women unknown to fame whose hearts 
burned within them as they walked with 
Christ life's pilgrim way. Such are our real 
superiors, for whom earth owes heaven its 
boundless gratitude. 

"We thank Thee for each mighty one 
Through whom the living light hath shone; 
And for each humble soul and sweet 
That lights to heaven our wandering feet." 1 

Christ has succeeded marvelously with 
the individual. "Jesus never failed but once 
with the individual," said the author of 
Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush; "that was 
with Pilate. He never succeeded in public 
but once; that was when he was crucified." 
The individual with whom Jesus has suc- 
ceeded has not been primarily a product of 
his social environment. Some have lived at 
war with their age like Savonarola and 

1 Richard Watson Gilder in The Methodist Hymnal. By 
permission of The Methodist Book Concern. 

74 



CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 

Wesley; others have detached themselves 
from society and lived in monasteries, like 
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux; all have been 
conspicuous, their very goodness shining in 
gleaming contrast to the dingy social ideals 
amid which they passed their days. 

The twentieth century is an ethical im- 
provement on that in which the first disciples 
were as sheep among wolves. But the man 
who went down to Jericho was not the last 
person to fall among thieves. The brigands 
who beat and robbed him were more primi- 
tive in their methods, but not different in 
their principles from the modern profiteer. 
The prodigal son was not the last social 
parasite. The manner of his life in the "far 
country" is reproduced in thousands of use- 
less lives to-day; and uselessness is among 
the worst of social crimes. Class hatred and 
special privilege are as unchristian to-day as 
when the Great Teacher flung his terrific 
denunciations into the faces of the astonished 
scribes and Pharisees. If present-day society 
were to be transformed overnight into a 
Christian civilization, it would be so unlike 
anything we have experienced that it would 

75 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

be like living in a new world in company 
with a new order of humanity. 

The following elementary tests may rea- 
sonably be applied as conditions governing a 
possible Christian civilization. Human so- 
ciety is Christian: 

(a) Where the interrelation of social 
units, as states or nations, is of reciprocal 
helpfulness. 

(b) Where the attitude of the social unit 
—the controlling powers of the state — to the 
individual is that of impartial justice and 
opportunity. 

(c) Where the majority of individuals 
composing the social unit maintain brotherly 
relations one with another. Society func- 
tioning under these conditions would be the 
widest possible departure from any known 
social standard. Such society would pre- 
suppose, for one thing, international Chris- 
tianity, a real brotherhood of nations. From 
the viewpoint of known social standards 
nothing could be more revolutionary. The 
relation of man to man would be radically 
altered. But Christianity as the law of so- 
ciety has never been enacted in the Parlia- 

76 



CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 

ment of Man, never seriously considered in 
the Federation of the world. A city wherein 
dwelleth righteousness is an experiment 
which has never yet succeeded on earth. The 
geography of the New Jerusalem is of a 
paradise which is yet to materialize. 

The Christian religion is a simplifying 
process. It reorganizes individual character 
around two simple, uncompromising mo- 
tives: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart . . . , and thy neighbor as 
thyself." But the practical application of 
the simplicity of Christ's teachings to a 
problem as intricate as is modern society is 
fraught with perplexing difficulties. We 
live in a network of human relationships. 
Each man is many kinds of men; he is a 
father, a son, a citizen, a buyer, a seller, a 
competitor, a producer, a consumer. Is it 
possible to Christianize all of these relation- 
ships? Can government be at once efficient 
and Christian? Can business be both Chris- 
tian and practical? Is the gospel of the 
Nazarene antagonistic to the law of self- 
preservation? What are the statistics of the 
strange paradox, "He that loseth his life 

77 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

shall find it"? The task of Christianizing 
society lies not so much in its human diffi- 
culty as in its practicability. The question 
is not, "Is it hard to do?" but "Can it be 
done?" If its difficulty were the sole ob- 
stacle, the task of Christianizing society 
would be relatively simple. The challenge 
of the difficult is one which appeals to daunt- 
less human nature. If it is a mountain 
range, human skill will tunnel under it. If 
it is an ocean of wind and wave, man's in- 
genuity and daring plow through or sail 
over it. If it is the undiscovered poles of the 
earth, the very dangers lure adventurous 
spirits to the white stillness of those far 
frozen zones. If it is a cause dear to his 
heart, man marches unflinching through fire 
and blood to attain it. If the Christianizing 
of society is solely a difficulty, be it ever so 
great, the day will dawn on earth when so- 
ciety will acknowledge the right of the Hero 
of the Gospels to say: "Ye call me Lord and 
Master, and ye say well, for so I am." 

It is on the sole assumption that the Chris- 
tian regeneration of society is a difficulty 
rather than an impossibility that the subject 

78 



CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 

merits any discussion whatever. If it is an 
impossibility, the question had best be closed, 
and the champions of the Christian religion 
be content to see individual Christian char- 
acters growing in the world but not of the 
world, like lovely flowers blooming in drear 
places. If the transforming power of the 
Christian religion is limited to the conversion 
of the individual here and there, monasticism 
is the most logical means to the end. But if 
a Christian civilization is a possibility, such 
hypothesis is a standing challenge to every 
Christian, be its consummation ever so 
remote and its achievement ever so diffi- 
cult. 

A possible Christian civilization must rest 
upon certain indispensable principles, thb 
omission of any one of which precludes the 
possibility of insuring its achievement. 
The amenability of humanity as society to 
the social principles of Jesus is a primary 
condition to its social rebirth. The-achieve- 
ment is unthinkable unless the interrelation- 
ship of man with his fellow man can be 
controlled by the spirit of Jesus Christ. In 
his De Civitate Dei, Saint Augustine says: 

79 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

"Two loves have built two cities: love of self, 
or the egotism that issues in blindness and 
contempt of God, built the earthly city; the 
love of God and the ideal urged to the point 
of self-sacrifice raised the celestial city . . . 
The two societies are respectively that of the 
idealist and altruist and that of the egotists." 
These two fundamentally different ideals of 
society, under varying forms, have competed 
throughout history for the possession of the 
world, and though the competition still goes 
forward, the later city has apparently ever 
been the stronger. Plato speaks as the voice 
of human experience in all ages when he 
declares that "the ideal city is nowhere on 
earth." 

"The egotism that issues in blindness," 
which has built "the earthly city," is the same 
spirit which has raised barriers of hatred and 
jealousy between nations. The more en- 
lightened nations may indignantly disavow 
the unscrupulous statecraft of Machiavelli, 
but the international policy of each state is 
in principle Machiavellian. "Our father- 
land must be defended by glory or by 
shame," he asserted. "When her safety is 
80 



CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 

at stake there must be no consideration of 
injustice, of pity or of mercy, of shame or of 
honor ; we must put aside all else and follow 
whatever course may conduce to her life and 
freedom." This is a genuine expression of 
conventional patriotism. But by no dexter- 
ity of New Testament exegesis can Machia- 
vellian statesmanship be squared with the 
teaching of Jesus. Such is not rendering to 
Caesar the things that are Caesar's, but the 
selling of soul and body to Caesar. Can it be 
questioned that the foreign policies of the 
nations of the world to-day are more Machia- 
vellian than Christian? M. D. Petrie, in the 
Hibbert Journal (April, 1920) , discusses the 
question in unequivocal language: "Can 
any one seriously maintain that the counsels 
of Christian perfection could be adopted as 
state maxims? Greece and Home had their 
War Gods as well as their War Lords; 
Christianity knows none such. The great 
law of disinterestedness, of self-abandon- 
ment, of life for others — can it find a place 
in sound politics? Could the gospel be used 
as a manual of statecraft? Could any 
statesman allow himself the luxury of loving 

81 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

a rival state as his own?" These are consid- 
erations which cannot be evaded on the plea 
of national self preservation. Until the 
gospel is used as a manual of statecraft, 
until Christianity is allowed to assume the 
political and social responsibility as well as 
the spiritual responsibility of man, a Chris- 
tian civilization is a misnomer. 

The eyes of optimism see the silver lining 
to the political storm clouds hovering over 
the world. Aristotle said that man was a 
"political animal." Some observers note in- 
creasing signs that this "political animal" is 
becoming dissatisfied with the political sit- 
uation which he has created. It is apparent 
that, despite the political and social bedlam 
of the modern world, despite its jealousies 
and rivalries, the peoples of the earth are 
tiring of the old social order. What they are 
anticipating may be nothing more tangible 
than some vague theory of economic better- 
ment or political equity. But signs are not 
wanting that the heart of humanity is for- 
saking its old idols of political rivalries and 
social tyrannies. There is an unmistakable 

1 By permission of The Hibbert Journal. 



CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 

world-weariness which is indicative of a 
prevalent desire for a more idealistic form 
of social life. If — and there seems to be rea- 
son for such hope — "the city of self or ego- 
tism" is losing its hold on mankind, the time 
may not be remote when the "political ani- 
mal" will welcome international Christianity, 
not as a new and wider political alliance, but 
as a super-state ideal, a kingdom of God on 
earth, a mandate of humanity. 

The realization of a Christian civilization 
is conditioned upon divine authority in addi- 
tion to human susceptibility. If Jesus did 
not intend that society should be Christian- 
ized, there is small likelihood of Christianity 
ever becoming the realized ideal of a civiliza- 
tion. Human achievements do not transcend 
divine purposes. The unbiased student of 
Christian ethics cannot but see that Jesus 
longed for a perfect social order to be estab- 
lished on earth. What other meaning can 
possibly be attached to the petition: "Thy 
kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as 
it is in heaven"? Jesus did not formulate 
methods to accomplish this end — methods 
change with changing conditions — but his 

83 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

purpose is unmistakable. The world was 
loathsome with corruption; he wanted it 
purified, so he told his disciples that they 
were to be "the salt of the earth." The 
world was in darkness; he yearned for its 
illumination, so he taught his followers to be 
"the light of the world." Society was with- 
out moral guidance; so he impressed upon 
his converts their moral opportunity, saying 
"A city set on the hill cannot be hid." He 
regarded all mankind as the potential sub- 
jects of his kingdom, so he sent his disciples 
as his ambassadors to the Gentile world, with 
the command: "Go ye into all the world, 
and make disciples of all nations." Any 
scheme of Christianity which does not con- 
template the Christianizing of society is a 
partial understanding and an abortive carry- 
ing out of the program of Jesus. The con- 
version of society into a Christian civilization 
has the unmistakable authority of the teach- 
ings and purpose of Jesus. At the begin- 
ning of his ministry Jesus announced that he 
came not to bring peace into the world but 
a sword. Whenever that sword flashed it 
struck some social sin of his times — extor- 

84 



CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 

tionate taxation, "burdens grievous to be 
borne," the tyranny of caste in religion. 
When we feel his indignation kindling to the 
white heat of wrath, it is in his denunciation 
of the "whited sepulchers" whose sins were 
the crimes of social injustice, the Pharisees 
who tithed "mint and rue and all manner of 
herbs, and omitted judgment," the lawyers 
who took away "the key of knowledge," the 
fools who made clean the "outside of the 
cup," but withheld alms from the deserving 
poor. It is not to be supposed that Jesus's 
arraignment of the scribes and Pharisees is 
limited to the men to whom he spoke, or that 
the system of which they were the products 
is one of isolated and exceptional wicked- 
ness. Christ's denunciation of the sins of his 
contemporaries is his condemnation of wrong 
human relationships in every age. It is his 
official order for a general offensive for all 
times against all fronts where social sins are 
entrenched. The Son of man was the relent- 
less enemy of all institutions built on "man's 
inhumanity to man." Christianity, if it be 
loyal to its Founder, can never sheathe the 
sword until all social wrongs are slain. 

85 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

The destructive mission of Jesus was pre- 
liminary to his constructive work. He 
destroyed in order that he might fulfill. His 
constructive program was to build humanity 
into a social order which he could approve 
and call his own. His ideal of society he set 
forth in the phrase, "The kingdom of God." 
This ideal was not a remote, unearthly city 
gleaming in some "fair dawn beyond the gate 
of death." It was an institution to be set up 
on the earth. Though conceived in heaven, 
it was to be established on earth. Its inspira- 
tion was spiritual but its structure was to be 
necessarily political. It was to be eternal in 
quality but of a temporal benefit to man. 
The best qualified interpreters of Jesus's 
teachings so understood the meaning of 
the "kingdom of God." The redemption 
of the world into a better social order is 
expressed by Peter's phrase "a kingdom 
of priests," by Saint John's majestic 
figure of "a new heaven and a new earth 
wherein dwelleth righteousness," by the 
stately language of Athanasius, "a holy 
season lasting the whole year round, a 
temple confined only to the limits of the 

86 



CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 

habitable world, a priesthood coextensive 
with the human race." 

A further condition in the Christianizing 
of society is the hypothetical virility of the 
Christian religion. Is the Christian religion 
powerful enough to shape human society 
into a civilization distinctively Christian? Its 
progress is equitable enough, its laws just 
enough, its precepts idealistic enough, its 
divine authority is sufficiently emphatic if 
carried out to build an ideal social organiza- 
tion out of human material. But is the ideal 
which was born amid the hills of Galilee 
strong enough to master human nature? 
Can the Pierced Hand rule this world? Can 
the Voice that blessed, also command and be 
obeyed? Is Christianity as virile as it is 
holy? The Herald of Asia, a secular Tokyo 
paper, which is regarded as the semiofficial 
organ of the Mikado's government, has ex- 
pressed its disappointment at Japanese 
Christianity. "For the first twenty or thirty 
years," this journal says, "Christianity was 
highly respected though not formally wel- 
comed. . . . The new faith is losing its grip 
on the national mind. It is too spineless to 

87 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

command the attention of a virile people like 
the Japanese." This editorial merits consid- 
eration in that it reflects the official attitude 
of the most aggressive nation of the Orient 
toward our faith. If it is true that our re- 
ligion is "too spineless" to challenge the 
interest of the people in the land of Nippon, 
there is scant hope of its commanding the 
allegiance of any people. From the view- 
point of Christ the religious situation in 
America is but little more encouraging than 
the alleged status of Japanese Christianity. 
Approximately, one-half of the people of 
the United States are either members of or 
are affiliated with the church. If these fifty 
million Americans were in truth Christians, 
the kingdom of God would be established 
on the western hemisphere within twelve 
months. But the preponderance of these 
church people are not Christians; numbers 
of them bear not the slightest resemblance to 
the Man of Galilee. Light passing through 
an opaque medium glows dimly, and the 
light of the cross shining through our hu- 
manity is all but dissipated. The truth can- 
not be evaded that Christianity as the major- 

88 



CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 

ity of church members live it is too ineffec- 
tual to shape society into any real semblance 
of a Christian civilization. No influence is 
more impotent than half-hearted religious 
faith. The Christian religion is powerful 
only when it is the supreme motive in the life 
of its adherents. When it occupies a subor- 
dinate place it is a weak and futile thing. 
Unless its disciples seek first "the kingdom 
of God and his righteousness," the faith 
which they profess makes little impression 
on the non-professing. The Nazarene im- 
poses a stern discipline upon all who would 
follow him. The conventional Christianity 
of the church which requires of the commu- 
nicants only donations and attendance upon 
worship is a pale pretense of obeying the 
words of Jesus : "If any man will come after 
me, let him deny himself, and take up his 
cross, and follow me." A disciple of Jesus 
cannot wield the power of the cross until 
he has first felt the weight of the cross. Not 
until the first converts left their boats and 
nets were they commissioned as fishers of 
men. Not until Simon Peter bowed before 
the supremacy of the person of Christ was he 

89 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

intrusted with the keys of the kingdom of 
heaven. Not until the disciples had sur- 
rendered their dreams of a place in an earthly 
kingdom and asked for the last time the 
question: "Lord, wilt thou at this time 
restore the kingdom of Israel?" did they 
hear Christ saying to them, "All power is 
given unto you in heaven and on earth." 
Not until the fiery pupil of Gamaliel had 
surrendered to the Vision of the Damascus 
road, asking "What wilt thou have me do?" 
was he sent for as a chosen vessel to the 
Gentile world. 

There is not one "spineless" element in 
the teachings, the discipline, or the nature of 
the Founder of our faith. Men who have 
been most thoroughly captivated by Jesus 
have impressed the world by the reckless 
heroism of their lives. Others "took knowl- 
edge of them that they had been with Jesus." 
Christianity was not supine in the days when 
a few Jewish peasants defied the hostility of 
their countrymen who sat in the seats of the 
mighty. Christianity was something more 
than a harmless superstition when the sands 
of the Roman arenas drank the blood of 
90 



CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 

martyrs, and the funeral flames of burning 
Christians were the weird torches which 
lighted Nero's festival gardens. Christian- 
ity was not an inert sentiment when official 
Rome capitulated before the heralds of the 
cross. Christianity was most formidable in 
the days when it suffered the severest per- 
secutions. When religion is most positive it 
creates passionate devotion or meets with 
fierce opposition. When it is negative it is 
tolerated or ignored. The phenomenal 
growth of early Christianity was mainly due 
to three causes: (a) The zeal of the early 
disciples, (b) their singleness of purpose, 
(c) the conscious need of the world for spir- 
itual reality. This zeal was born of devotion 
to the person of Christ ; the program was to 
win converts from the pagan religions; the 
readiness of the people to receive the gospel 
arose from their lack of any other satisfac- 
tory scheme for the present life or any 
promise of lif e in the world to come. 

If Christianity succeeds in accomplishing 
the hitherto unaccomplished task of perme- 
ating society, its champions will be zealots as 
well as interpreters. The Christianity that 

91 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

wins the modern world must of necessity be 
an impassioned religious crusade. Not as 
an eclectic philosophy, or as a tolerated in- 
stitution of respectable society can "the faith 
once delivered to the saints" fulfill its mis- 
sion in changing the life of mankind. A pas- 
sionless faith is an impotent faith. If 
Christianity in modern times permeates the 
life of the people, it must first be revitalized. 
Modern Christianity needs to feel the glow 
of an inner flame to make itself felt. Only 
one motive is capable of supplying the 
needed inspiration — a renewal of devotion to 
the Christ who is the same to-day, yesterday, 
and forever. This is the sole authoritative 
motive of Christian inspiration. In this 
sense the Christianity of to-day needs to imi- 
tate the Christianity of the first century. 
Christianity as our age knows it will inevit- 
ably fail, be it ever so well organized, unless 
its ardor is constantly fed by the presence of 
Him who says to men in all ages who are 
willing to listen to him : "Lo, I am with you 
always." The gospel has no power to in- 
spire save in the realism of the eternal Christ. 
Early Christianity was a proselyting 
92 



CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 

faith. Its activity was chiefly expressed in 
winning recruits from the pagan world. The 
program of the early church was almost ex- 
clusively individualistic, that is, to persuade 
a person to forsake the altars of pagan 
deities, acknowledge the divinity, Saviour- 
hood and Lordship of Jesus, and accept the 
rite of baptism. Groups of these converts 
became Christian churches. The churches, 
when first organized, had no thought of at- 
tempting to reconstruct the Roman empire 
into a Christian civilization. An ideal social 
order was contrary both to their expectation 
and their desire. Their aim was not to make 
the world a better place in which to live, but 
to make men better by detaching them from 
the world. Primitive Christianity was not 
primarily a social gospel. First-century 
Christianity lived in an age when a slave 
was the chattel of his owner, but the litera- 
ture of the early church contains no abolition 
sentiments. On the contrary, we hear Paul 
urging slaves to be in subjection to their 
masters. This indifference to or acceptance 
of social evils was largely due to the feeling 
among the early Christians that the end of 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATIOX 

the world was near, and that there was little 
need of trying to mend a machine which 
would soon fall to pieces. 

The task of Christianity in our times, 
though not essentially different from the 
task of first-century Christianity, is vastly 
more difficult and comprehensive. The 
dominant nations of the world to-day are 
nominally Christian nations. In the most 
enlightened sections of the modern world 
theoretical Christianity is the religion of the 
most influential people. The church experi- 
ences little difficulty in adding to its mem- 
bership ; but the great mission of Christian- 
ity to-day is not primarily that of increasing 
the membership of the church. Social regen- 
eration is the essential need of the times. It 
is certain that human life will continue on 
this planet for innumerable years to come. 
The end of man's tenure of earth is too re- 
mote to be imagined. Few seriously believe 
that it is the divine plan to consume the 
earth and its inhabitants in a sudden spectac- 
ular conflagration. "The individual withers, 
but the race is more and more." As Chris- 
tianity is meant to include the entire area of 

94 



CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 

human life, it is obviously within its program 
to improve all human relations, to recon- 
struct humanity into a better society than 
we know. An interpretation of the religion 
of Christ which has no social applications is 
an incomplete interpretation. Christianity 
will not have finished its work on earth until 
human society has been rebuilt on the prin- 
ciples of Jesus, until the Golden Rule is sub- 
stituted for the rule of gold, and the Golden 
Age succeeds the age of gold. The task 
which challenges Christianity to-day is that 
of making society distinctively Christian 
as it has made multitudes of individuals 
Christlike. 

The widespread and ceaseless social tur- 
moil of our times is a confession in confused 
tongues by our humanity that society as the 
world has always known it has been weighed 
in the balance and found wanting. True, 
many old demons have been exorcised from 
society, but their expulsion has too often 
left the house empty. Christian social ideals 
must replace these exorcised evils, lest the 
demons, returning with their strength re- 
cruited, take full possession of the house and 

95 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

thus make the social life of modern times 
seven fold more demoniacal than before. 
The modern world presents Christianity 
with mighty difficulties, and therefore with 
great opportunities. 

Human life is suffering from a deep- 
seated and malignant disease, and there is no 
other Name under heaven whereby it can be 
saved. Jesus Christ is the only hope for our 
distracted world. Personal piety is not 
rooted in social iniquity. It is Christianity 
which demands the kingdom of God in this 
world. It is Christianity which must make 
men feel that there is no difference in the 
highwayman outside the pale of the law and 
the robber within the law. It is Christianity 
which can make men realize that their rela- 
tion to their fellow men is an obligation, 
rather than an opportunity for exploitation. 
It is Christianity which can make men see 
that idleness is parasitism, and that para- 
sitism is shameless dishonesty. It is Chris- 
tianity which can make men know that no 
work is of worth which does not contribute 
to the sum-total of human good. Christian- 
ity, and Christianity only, can build out 

96 



CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 

of the jungle of hate, greed, and coarse 
indulgence a city of refined taste, a city 
of brotherly love, a city of ethical beauty, 
the City of God. At the beginning of 
the World War there were cynical stylists 
who informed the race that Christianity had 
collapsed and the church would hereafter 
have merely a museum interest to the man 
of to-day. Subsequent events have empha- 
sized the truth of Oscar Wilde's definition of 
the cynic: "A man who knows the price of 
everything and the worth of nothing." Since 
the day of Pentecost the church, by its 
abounding energy and ever-widening scope 
of activity, has been defeating hostile criti- 
cism, silencing prophets of pessimism, and 
vindicating the wisdom of the just Gamaliel: 
"Refrain from these men, and let them 
alone: for if this counsel or this work be of 
men, it will come to nought : But if it be of 
God, ye cannot overthrow it." The death- 
less vitality of the Christian religion demon- 
strates that "the mystery of godliness" is the 
survival of the fittest in all ages. Twentieth- 
century civilization, though displaying much 
confused thinking, distorted morality, nause- 

97 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

ous cant, and vulgar greed, is feeling the 
effect of powerful forces working for right- 
eousness. The joint missionary campaign 
recently inaugurated by the two branches 
of Episcopal Methodism in America was 
one of the most far-reaching and significant 
movements in Christian history. The Cente- 
nary Movement, with its splendid audacity, 
demanding of church members the consecra- 
tion of wealth and life, was a declaration by 
militant Methodism that the security of the 
homeland lies not in socialized Christianity 
but in Christianized society, that the camp 
fires of foreign missions which have been 
bravely burning against the night skies of 
paganism for more than one hundred years 
shall be replenished and multiplied until 
every tongue has confessed and every knee 
bowed to the absolute supremacy of Jesus 
Christ. Inspired by the same lofty motives, 
other churches are waging vigorous warfare 
against social evils and building up the 
waste places at home and abroad. The New 
Era movement in the Presbyterian Church, 
the educational and missionary movements 
in the Baptist denomination, the fine zeal for 
98 



CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 

service shown by organizations like the 
Brotherhood of Saint Andrew in the Epis- 
copal Communion mean that the Church of 
God is seeing with clearer eyes the vision of 
its opportunities and is seriously feeling the 
weight of its world-wide obligation. While 
such enterprises have necessarily moved 
along the lines of denominational activity, 
the spirit of good fellowship and helpfulness 
has waxed stronger among Protestant 
churches. Whatever criticism, merited or 
unmerited, of the machinery of the lapsed 
Interchurch Movement, the motive of this 
effort was a sincere desire for Christian 
unity, a worthy motive which will express it- 
self again and again until denominational 
jealousies shall be as remotely unthinkable 
as the burning of witches and the thumb- 
screws of the Spanish Inquisition. The hope 
of the race is in the triumph of righteousness, 
the triumph of righteousness is in the 
strength of the church, the strength of the 
church is the abiding presence of Him in 
whose companionship we feel our hearts 
strangely warmed. 



99 



CHAPTER VI 

CHRISTIANITY THE WAY OF 
PROGRESS 

Peogkess is a condition of life. As such, 
it is as essential as it is desirable. Ours is 
a progressive age. "Forward !" is the watch- 
word. We live in advanced times; all who 
would not be stragglers must keep step with 
the onward movements. The world demands 
that men keep abreast of the times. Let the 
devil take the hindermost! Useless hinder- 
most ! The way our fathers lived is too slow 
to suit their children. To-day has scant 
respect for yesterday. We are an enter- 
prising, inventive, efficient people. Behold 
the works of our hands and brains ! We have 
made of electricity a servant as Prospero did 
of Ariel. It lights us, warms us, rides us, 
cooks for us, prints for us, executes criminals 
for us. A thousand mechanical devices per- 
form the work rapidly and accurately which 
brawn and muscle once did slowly and 
crudely. When our forefathers settled on 
100 



THE WAY OF PROGRESS 

this continent, the process of demand and 
supply was the simple one of getting what 
they needed from the soil and the forest. 
With the vast increase of population the 
problem became exceedingly complicated; 
but it has been solved by the system of mod- 
ern commerce. The size, intricacy, com- 
plexity, and efficiency of the modern com- 
mercial machine is a marvel. A person may 
dine on the products of the sea which he has 
never seen, eat the bread from fields which 
he has never tilled, and sell goods which he 
has never possessed. 

We have systematized and applied the 
knowledge with which science has furnished 
us. Biology, chemistry, physics, geology, 
medicine have made our world more intel- 
ligible, human life safer and more comfort- 
able, enabled men to walk the earth less by 
faith and more by sight, banished many ills 
to which the human flesh is heir, and robbed 
the grave of many a premature and unfair 
victory. In short, the road from the 
cradle to the grave has been graded, lighted, 
smoothed, and made easier than the rough 
way our fathers trod. Ours is a progressive 
101 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

age. Who can question it? Sociology too 
has won its laurels in helping humanity. So- 
cial science has healed many gaping wounds 
in the body of society. Hospitals, asylums 
reformatories no longer permit the unfor- 
tunate to die by the roadside or the maniac 
to scream among the tombs. Despite a 
World War through which we have recently 
passed, we flatter ourselves that the conduct 
of the twentieth-century individual is on a 
higher ethical plane than that of the man of 
a generation or two ago. Reforms have 
moved forward on a wide front. A number 
of iniquitous customs have been outlawed. 
The saloon is a memory. Social respectabil- 
ity has driven vice into the byways and dark 
alleys. An aroused public conscience is lift- 
ing the misplaced burdens from the shoulders 
of little children. Enlightened public opin- 
ion demands compulsory education, and 
rightfully takes from irresponsible parents 
the power to keep their offspring in ignor- 
ance. Judged by statistics and financial re- 
ports, the race is making wonderful ethical 
strides. We are an enlightened, competent, 
forward-looking people, and we are vastly 
102 



THE WAY OF PROGRESS 

pleased with our achievements. We have 
diligently sought success in the fields of com- 
merce and physical science, and we have 
found it. We have moved forward with 
amazing celerity along these lines. Our 
achievements are all but commensurate with 
our aspirations. Verily, we have our re- 
ward! 

Who would maintain that the material 
equipment of our age is less desirable than 
the rude furniture of the past? We would 
not exchange the conveniences and comforts 
of to-day for the inconveniences and hard- 
ships of yesterday. We prefer the electric 
light to the tallow dip, railway trains to the 
stagecoach, the motor car to saddlebags, the 
newspaper to the town-crier, paved roads to 
the mountain trail. To utilize the resources 
of the earth is the right and privilege of man. 
"God giveth us all things richly to enjoy." 
Each discovery, each invention is nature 
yielding her secrets to those who knock at 
her doors, and it doth not yet appear what 
new marvel the future will reveal. Along 
the way of things desirable our civilization 
has traveled fast and far. 
103 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

In certain phases of human conduct the 
present has profited by the mistakes of the 
past, though our ethical progress is far be- 
hind our material advancement. The appli- 
cation of social science to economic malad- 
justments and vicious institutions is our 
usual way of measuring our moral progress. 
There is an obvious though a doubtless un- 
conscious tendency to estimate the value of 
ethics in terms of commercial results. The 
measure of moral progress is no less the 
ethical quality of the motive by which it is 
inspired than the desirable physical results 
achieved. Men do not gather figs of thistles. 
The argument that prohibition is a good 
business investment has no higher moral 
standing than the argument that the saloon 
is a good business investment. If a hospital 
is built solely for the purpose of protecting 
the healthy against disease of which the sick 
are the foci, it is as ethical to kill the sick 
in some painless manner as to segregate 
them in isolated wards. If churches and 
schools and beneficent laws have only a prac- 
tical value, they indicate material rather than 
ethical progress. Nevertheless, a sane op- 
104 



THE WAY OF PROGRESS 

timism is justified in believing that the 
morally imperative mood of our age is at 
least partially responsible for good laws and 
humane institutions. Surely, a feeling that 
intemperance is a wrong use of life is a 
deeper cause for a saloonless nation than 
other considerations. Surely, wise and mer- 
ciful legal statutes are the expression of a 
real desire for justice and kindliness rather 
than a demand for expediency. Surely, 
asylums and rescue homes are born of pity 
in the hearts of the people rather than a de- 
mand for self -protection. If it be true that 
genuine altruism rather than disguised self- 
ishness is bringing to pass those things that 
make human life cleaner, more orderly, bet- 
ter controlled, more carefully conserved, our 
age, though its most notable achievements 
are material, still has much ethical accom- 
plishment to its credit. 

Progress, in modern times, though it has 
been conspicuous in many important fields, 
is barely perceptible in others. The advance 
has been on an uneven front, and at some 
points there has been no advance at all. 
Judging by results, our age pays scant 
105 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

homage to the culture of the soul, and re- 
fuses to believe that religion is "the chief 
concern of mortals here below." Many there 
are who consider the religious life highly de- 
sirable or even important, but not primarily 
essential. Therein they confess their gross 
stupidity and reveal a nature that is of the 
earth earthy. True religion has no legitimate 
place in the life of man unless it be the first 
place. There is a Something in human na- 
ture which we call "The Soul." It is this 
Something which has driven man from the 
jungles to civilization, and at rare intervals 
has brought him to what Carlyle called "The 
edge of the Infinite." When the soul's wings 
are weakest man drops back into the muck 
and mire of animalism. The light of re- 
ligious faith has never been completely ex- 
tinguished since the human race began its 
long climb upward. Occasionally it has 
burned fitfully, the storms have threatened 
it, and at times it has come perilously near to 
fading out. But in the vast temple of hu- 
manity, built of meanness and magnificence, 
there have always been vestal spirits who 
kept the fire glowing on the altar. The tem- 
106 



THE WAY OF PROGRESS 

pie of humanity shines in splendor, or is 
shadowed in gloom as the light on the altar 
of religion is bright or dim. Man is most 
sublime when he is on a spiritual quest. The 
paths that have been made by men who have 
followed the gleam are the world's truest 
highways. The essential contributions to 
human welfare are religious contributions. 
Isaiah, Saint John, Thomas Aquinas, Saint 
Francis, Luther, Wesley, represent the in- 
dispensable men of the race. 

Religious progress is the essential line of 
progress. Ibsen believed that man's chief 
work is his soul. The indispensable struc- 
ture which man builds is his spiritual edifice. 
All else is scaffolding which must fall away 
when its usefulness is ended, a temporary 
building which has no place in the universe 
save as a means to an end. To reverse the 
position of the primary and the secondary 
is to disregard the logic of life and incur the 
penalty of hopeless confusion. The wisest 
of all teachers declared that it was inex- 
cusable folly to seek material progress at the 
expense of spiritual loss. "What doth it 
profit a man, if he gain the whole world 
107 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

and lose his own soul?" It is man in an 
irrational relation to the universe. 

The failure of the sum-total of modern 
man's achievements is his phenomenal suc- 
cess in acquiring the world and his desultory 
interest in his soul. Our chief work has not 
been the soul. "At present we all instinc- 
tively consider the work of man's hands more 
lasting than the man himself," said William 
Butler Yeats in a recent interview, to a rep- 
resentative of The New York Times: "Our 
education, our political institutions, our 
economics, are naturally occupied with mak- 
ing the handiwork more efficient. We want 
to make the man a good laborer or a good 
clerk or a good professor . . . But establish 
that the personality itself will outlive all its 
handiwork, even though the handiwork 
might have been the pyramids, the main ob- 
ject of all politics and all our economics will 
be the perfection of the personality itself." 1 

The progress of the modern world lacks 
uniformity. It shows elements of strength 
and elements of weakness. It has gone for- 
ward here and retreated or marked time 



x By permission of New York Times. 

108 



THE WAY OF PROGRESS 

there. Its area is irregular, its boundary 
uneven like the map of a country. True 
progress is uniform expansion like the 
widening of a circle which retains its circular 
identity. On the map of modern civilization 
spiritual geography occupies a real but very 
limited area. Our Galilees and Olivets are 
discernible but obscure. Institutions of ma- 
terialism have monopolized human interest. 
Commercial acumen is a quality which finds 
a readier market than the vision of the 
prophet. The promise of loaves and fishes 
receives greater consideration than the warn- 
ing that man cannot live by bread alone. 
The luxury which wealth gives seems more 
desirable than the peace which the world can- 
not give. Had our spiritual life kept pace 
with our material advancement, the attend- 
ant sorrows of the war would not have 
caused bewildered men and distracted 
women to commit the pitiful folly of seeking 
solace for grief in the shallows of necro- 
mancy. 

The popularity of the ouija board was a 
shameless confession of our spiritual pov- 
erty. The recent epidemic of spiritualism in 
109 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

England and America was the distressing 
spectacle of human nature in desperate need 
of the support of spiritual religion, yet un- 
equipped with religious experience — a con- 
dition which either drives man into the 
swamps of animal excesses or sends him into 
a mental wilderness in quest of some will-o'- 
the wisp of superstition. For the modern man, 
the World War was Gethsemane without 
the strengthening presence of the angel of 
God. 

The world of to-day is filled with commer- 
cial giants and spiritual pigmies. "The fore- 
going generations," wrote Emerson in words 
that are as applicable to our times as to his, 
"beheld God and nature face to face; we 
through their eyes. Why should not we also 
enjoy an original relation to the universe? 
Why should we not have a poetry and a 
philosophy of insight instead of traditions, 
and religion by revelation to us and not the 
history of theirs? Why should we grope 
among the dry bones of its faded wardrobe?" 
Why not, indeed? Why not for man to-day 
an "original relation to the universe" as well 
as for the author of the fourth Gospel? Why 
110 



THE WAY OF PROGRESS 

not for twentieth-century America a religion 
of revelation as well as for first-century Gal- 
ilee ? Why not for the seeker of truth to-day 
an experience as vivid and compelling as 
that which befell the man of Tarsus? God 
does not confine himself to one group, nor 
limit his activities to one historical epoch. 
The elect of God are those who elect to seek 
God if haply they may find him. The chosen 
people have always been those people whose 
first choice was God. Pentecosts are for 
those who anywhere and at any time are will- 
ing to wait until power is given them from 
on high. What a luminous era our age 
might have been, if, as the heirs of all the 
ages, our chief pursuit had been after spir- 
itual riches. Had we been true to our 
spiritual heritage we would know more to- 
day of the meaning of God in Christ than 
the disciples who followed him in the days of 
his flesh. It was our privilege to have known 
the meaning of his words, "Greater works 
than these shall you do, because I go to my 
Father." What signals might have been 
flashing from the Jerusalem which is above ! 
What profound openings into the mystery 
111 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

of life and death might have been vouch- 
safed us! What transfigurations we might 
have beheld! Our human pilgrimage in- 
stead of being so much of the journey a Via 
Dolorosa might have been an Emmaus way, 
where our hearts burned within us through 
the consciousness of the mystic presence 
which hallows the universe. If we had given 
the consideration to the kingdom within 
which we have bestowed upon the kingdom 
without, even in these far-off days the heart 
of man could say: 

"But warm, sweet, tender, even yet 
A present help is He, 
And faith hath yet its Olivet, 
And love its Galilee. 

"The healing of the seamless dress 
Is by our beds of pain; 
We touch Him in life's throng and press, 
And we are whole again." 

Christianity, social or individual, demands 
symmetrical development. The gospel of the 
Galilaean issues orders to advance simulta- 
neously on all fronts. By this test, our 
boasted modern civilization, though not anti- 
Christian, is at best sub-Christian, a civiliza- 
112 



THE WAY OF PROGRESS 

tion whose material achievements are out of 
all proportion to its spiritual development. 
While medical science has traveled far be- 
yond Hippocrates and Galen; while astron- 
omy has widened the skies of Galileo; while 
the statutory laws have banished many social 
evils ; while chemistry and physics have made 
the lore of Middle Ages appear as crude 
guesses, the twentieth-century preacher is 
still the pupil of the first-century apostle. 
No subsequent treatise on Christian theology 
is in any degree comparable in spiritual ap- 
preciation to the Pauline Epistles. Saint 
Paul has no successor of equal magnitude. A 
handful of Jews are the spiritual teachers of 
twenty centuries. After the passing of two 
thousand years the best that Christian the- 
ology has done is to try to explain what the 
first disciples thought of Jesus of Nazareth. 
Historically this was to be expected but not 
experientially. A fact may be located in 
time but the experiences, implications, and 
applications of the fact are timeless. A 
historic revelation of God does not postulate 
a Deity whose principal interest and activity 
are in the past. The Holy Spirit is dynamic, 
113 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

not static. A continuous and progressive 
revelation is for those who have eyes to see 
and wills to know. 

Dr. Tyrrell, in his very suggestive book 
Christianity at the Cross-Roads, 1 argues that 
"we forget that every new comfort is a new 
necessity, a new source of discontent and un- 
happiness, and leaves the relative proportion 
of happiness and misery unaffected." Ex- 
pelled at one place, the tide of sorrow breaks 
through in another; expellas furca tamen 
usque recurret. Shall progress ever wipe 
away the tears from all eyes? Can it ever 
extinguish love, heal pride, tame ambition, 
and all their attendant woes? It is not 
enough to give a man bread for his body and 
knowledge for his mind. Prolong life as we 
may, can progress conquer death? And 
even given the attainment of its facile 
dreams, can progress postpone the day when 
mankind shall be blotted off the face of the 
universe that will go its way as if he had 
never been? 

What justification is there for progress 
which is merely utilitarian? If progress 

1 Longmans, Green & Co., Publishers. 
114 



THE WAY OF PROGRESS 

means the increase of humanitarianism and 
the growth of science, at best it serves but as 
the palliative of a human sorrow which it 
cannot diminish. When limited to the sphere 
of the practical, progress is the great illusion 
of human life. The soul of man cries out for 
the bread of life, and a practical progress 
feeds him the stones of physical achieve- 
ments. Christianity is the only complete 
definition of progress. True progress is 
Christian growth. Our civilization is in the 
testing. It has but to continue in the way in 
which it is going to become diminishingly 
Christian. To become increasingly Chris- 
tian a radical change of course is obligatory. 
We must be born again! It is imperative 
that we transfer our energies from the ma- 
terial to the spiritual side of life and em- 
phasize those things which we have too long 
neglected and leave to a subordinate place 
those interests which have monopolized our 
attention. The world has been too much 
with us. If during the next decade man 
could be persuaded to spend less time in 
physical laboratories and more time in the 
contemplation of the hidden beauties of na- 
115 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

ture, less time with the crowds and more with 
himself, less time with machinery and more 
time under the stars, less time in physical 
equipment and more in the culture of the 
soul, less time with the world and more time 
with God, less time in the courts of Mammon 
and more at the feet of the Great Teacher, 
less time in manual dexterity and more in 
prayer, then indeed would we have a record 
of progress of which the modern world 
might justly boast. We have experimented 
with everything except Christianity. We 
have exhibited every ideal save the Christian 
ideal. We have obeyed every master save 
the Master of right living. The time is at 
hand when we must heed him, or forfeit our 
spiritual birthright. Then : 

"Hushed be the noise and strife of the schools, 
Volume and pamphlet, sermon and speech, 
The lips of the wise and the prattle of fools — 
Let the Son of Man teach ! 

"Who has the key to the future but He? 
Who can unravel the knots in the skein? 
We have groaned and have travailed and sought 
to be free. 
We have travailed in vain. 
116 



THE WAY OF PROGRESS 

'Bewildered, dejected and prone to despair, 
To Him as at first we turn and beseech : 

Our ears are all open ! Give heed to our prayer ! 
Oh, Son of Man, teach!" 1 



1 "The School of Christ," by William F. McDowell. By 
permission of the Fleming H. Revell Publishing Company. 



in 



CHAPTER VII 

THE DIVINE RIGHT OF 
THE CHURCH 

The term "Christian civilization" has 
not been employed in this discussion as a 
synonym of a perfect state of society, but an 
expression of a condition of society which as 
a whole is more largely controlled by Chris- 
tian ideals than by other influences. As 
such, a Christian civilization would be the su- 
preme achievement of humanity. Should 
the twentieth century become Christian to 
the same degree that the Jews under the 
judges sought to obey Jehovah's will, or that 
the age of Pericles was artistic, or the era of 
the Csesars imperialistic, the accomplish- 
ment would be man's utmost triumph. It 
would eclipse the most glorious periods in all 
the annals of the peoples of the earth. The 
twentieth century as a Christian civilization 
would be the Golden Age of history. 

Under the scepter of the Christian civili- 
118 



DIVINE RIGHT OF CHURCH 

zation people's habits would be altered and 
their attitude towards life reversed. Indus- 
trial warfare would be impossible, public 
officials would regard their oath of office as 
sacramental, profiteering would be un- 
known, public amusement would be free of 
vulgarity, the ethics of the business world 
would not permit of exploitation by unrea- 
sonable profits, people would seek to learn 
the will of heaven more than the decalogue 
of mode, the non-churchman and the nominal 
churchman would be regarded as suspicious 
characters. What a strange, new world this 
would be ! Most of us would fit awkwardly 
into it, as the man in the parable who went to 
the wedding supper without a wedding gar- 
ment. The Christianity of our age is little 
more than a thin veneer, crude human nature 
covered with the varnish of Christian tradi- 
tions. 

And yet a Christian civilization is by no 
means inconceivable. Why should it be un- 
workable? Jesus dreamed of such a racial 
achievement when He spoke of drawing all 
men unto himself. Why should it be thought 
a thing impossible that one age might be- 
119 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

come as peculiarly Christian as others have 
been literary, or scientific, or commercial. 
Why may not the spiritual in man predomi- 
nate as the intellectual, political, or decora- 
tive has done? In individuals the spiritual 
has frequently been uppermost, why not in 
groups? There is as much potential divinity 
in humanity as there are other elements. 

By what means can a possible Christian 
civilization be brought to pass? It will not 
arrive suddenly, nor be ushered in by some 
unusual or spectacular display of supernat- 
ural power. Jesus taught that the growth of 
his kingdom would be gradual, almost im- 
perceptible, like that of vegetation: "First 
the seed, then the ear, then the full corn in 
the ear." When the people demanded of 
him a sign from heaven, He refused the re- 
quest and answered with a rebuke. "A 
wicked and adulterous generation seeketh 
after a sign. . . . No sign shall be given 
you." Men are not made better by being 
spectators of the marvelous. Many who 
witnessed the miracles of Jesus were not re- 
deemed. Thousands ate the bread which he 
miraculously supplied, and then went back 
120 



DIVINE RIGHT OF CHURCH 

and walked no more with him. Nicodemus 
was impressed, but not converted. Others 
who could not deny what they saw said that 
Jesus was in league with Beelzebub. When 
a sorcerer saw Peter performing miracles of 
healing, the necromancer was not redeemed, 
but evinced a keen interest in the apostle's 
gifts from a commercial motive. In the 
parable of Dives and Lazarus, the Master 
declared that the miraculous was of little 
value as a convincing argument, that even a 
phenomenon as startling as a man risen from 
the dead would not alter the stubborn will of 
man. Men are not redeemed by witness- 
ing inexplicable phenomena. Regeneration 
means other than the gratifying of stimulated 
curiosity. Herbert Spencer said that ideas 
do not govern or overthrow the world, but 
that "The world is governed or overthrown 
by feelings to which ideas serve only as 
guides." This is a literal contradiction of 
his own logic; the guide is obviously more 
responsible for the consequences than the 
impulse which demands guidance. With a 
deeper insight Emerson wrote, "The key to 
every man is his thought." Quinet stated 
121 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

that his chief object in writing his Genie des 
Religions was to show "how entirely each of 
the civilizations was the offspring of a re- 
ligious dogma." "If you wish to alter the 
destiny of a people," declared Pere Felix, a 
great French preacher, "you have only to 
alter its ideas." As a man thinketh in his 
heart so is he ! If our age is to see the birth 
of a Christian civilization, it will be the reign 
of certain ideas. Christian education is the 
sine qua non of a Christian civilization. But 
ideas which rule master while they educate. 
A compelling force inspires as well as in- 
structs. 

Is there an existing institution capable of 
both instruction and inspiration? Truth re- 
quires an objective agent. What will be the 
agent of a possible Christian civilization? 
In the past great men have been the agents 
of truth. God is cautious; he shares his 
secrets with those who value them. God 
introduces himself to the race through the 
medium of great personalities. When truth 
takes possession of a group an institution is 
born. The institution carries out the ideas 
transmitted to it through the individual. 
122 



DIVINE RIGHT OF CHURCH 

The record of an institution is, as Lamartine 
said of history, "Neither more nor less than 
biography on a large scale." It may right- 
fully be said that God delegates institutions 
to work out the plans which he has given to 
the race through exceptional persons. If a 
Christian civilization is to be, its agent will 
be an institution. 

What institution is qualified for the task 
of Christianizing the modern world? Is 
there in the world to-day a single institution 
carrying with it sufficient force, authority, 
and historical significance to be the builder 
of a civilization ruled by the ideas of Jesus 
Christ? In his introduction to the French 
Revolution Carlyle pauses to pay his tribute 
of respect and reverence to the church: "Ob- 
serve that of man's whole terrestrial posses- 
sions and attainments, unspeakably the 
noblest are his symbols, divine or divine- 
seeming, under which he marches and rights 
with victorious assurance in the life battle; 
what we call his Realized Ideals. Of which 
realized Ideals, omitting the rest, consider 
only these two : his church or spiritual Guid- 
ance; his kingship, or temporal one. The 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

church ! What a word was there ; richer than 
Golconda and the treasures of the world! 
In the heart of the remotest mountains rises 
the little kirk; the Dead all slumbering 
round it, under their white memorial stones, 
in hope of a happy resurrection: — dull wert 
thou, O Reader, if never in any hour — say 
of moaning midnight, when such a kirk hung 
spectral in the sky, and Being was as if swal- 
lowed up of Darkness — it spake to the 
things unspeakable, that went to thy soul's 
soul. Strong was he that had a church, what 
we call a church : he stood thereby though in 
the center of Immensities, in the conflux of 
eternities, yet noble toward God and man; 
the vague, shoreless universe had become for 
him a firm city, and dwelling which he knew. 
Well might men prize their Credo, and raise 
stateliest temples for it, and reverenced 
Hierarchies, and give the tithe of their sub- 
stance; it is worth living for and dying for." 
The church is the officially appointed and 
divinely ordained commissioner of the Chris- 
tian religion. In the sixteenth chapter of 
Saint Matthew is the record not of pontifi- 
cal spiritual authority bestowed upon a per- 
124 



DIVINE RIGHT OF CHURCH 

son, but of the church's divine commission: 
"He saith unto them, But whom say ye that 
I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, 
Thou art the Christ the Son of the living 
God. And Jesus answered and said unto 
him, Blessed art thou Simon Bar-jona; for 
flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, 
but my Father which is in heaven. And I 
say unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon 
this rock I will build my church; and the 
gates of hell shall not prevail against it." 
The historical significance of the Christian 
Church is tremendously impressive. Its 
historical origin is as definite as it is majes- 
tic; it begins with God manifesting himself 
in a historical character, Jesus of Nazereth. 
"For unto you is born this day in the city of 
David, a Saviour which is Christ the Lord." 
The church was born of a union of heaven 
with earth at a given date, and in a geo- 
graphical place. By contact with earth and 
time, its origin is rescued from the mists of 
the indefinite. It is not the fruit of great 
men's thought and dreams like Buddhism. 
Its conception is divine; its founder said, "I 
and the Father are one." The church is his- 
125 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

torically qualified as the maker of Christian 
civilization. 

The broad inclusiveness of the church 
makes its possible membership coextensive 
with humanity. Its Founder was a Jew, but 
the church knows no racial limits. Its birth- 
place was amid the Palestinian hills, but the 
church transcends all national and geo- 
graphical boundaries. Its temples lift their 
spires under all skies ; its faith is confessed in 
every tongue. Its birthday is in the first 
century, but its anniversaries are without 
end. The scope of its discipleship is un- 
limited. What other institution has a pro- 
gram as broad and as inspiring as the com- 
mission: "Go ye into all the world and make 
disciples of all nations ..'."? Jesus Christ 
is the one universal Man, and his church the 
one universal institution. The world is the 
parish of the church. 

The Church of Christ is as democratic as 
it is comprehensive. The doors are open to 
all, but each must enter through some one 
door. There is no private entrance into the 
church. "He that enter eth not in at the 
door, the same is a thief and a robber." "I 
126 



DIVINE RIGHT OF CHURCH 

am the door." Over each door leading into 
the church is the invisible inscription: "There 
is no other name under heaven whereby we 
must be saved." 

The vitality of the church springs from a 
source of perpetual life. The church is not 
a memorial to Jesus Christ. A memorial 
perpetuates the memory of the dead. The 
church is not a monument sacred to the 
memory of a dead Christ. Membership in 
the church is not an expression for a grave 
"in a lone Syrian town," but allegiance to a 
living person, "One Jesus, whom Paul af- 
firmed to be alive." The church is not a 
society existing merely for the purpose of 
learning what a great Teacher once said, but 
a school for learning what that Teacher is 
saying to-day. It is not an organization 
formed around an abstract idea, but an or- 
ganism fed from living ideas. The motive 
for its achievements is not conquest for the 
pride of conquest, but devotion to a Person. 
All results are the fruits of its personal in- 
spiration: "Lovest thou me? . . . Feed my 
sheep." 

The church has a unique place in history 
127 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

as the peculiar creation of Jesus. It is the 
sole institution for which he is directly re- 
sponsible. He rendered to Caesar the things 
that were Caesar's, but he is not the creator 
of the state. He talked with and listened to 
the doctors, but schools existed long before 
his day. He sanctified marriage and blessed 
the home, but he is not the founder of the 
home. The church is uniquely and exclu- 
sively Christian in its origin. In the beauti- 
ful metaphor "The Bride of Christ," Paul 
expresses Christ's exclusive proprietorship 
of the church. It is the only institution to 
which Christ applied the possessive pronoun. 
He declared, "I will build my church." The 
church is nonexistent unless it is exclusively 
Christian. The most convincing evidence of 
Jesus Christ to the world is the church. 
When Jesus departed from the world 
he left orders to build a Christian civilization 
on this earth, and the sole agency which he 
left to accomplish this end was the church. 
"I will build my church, and the gates of 
hell shall not prevail against it." If the 
sublime temple of a Christian civilization 
ever adorns the earth, the church will be its 
128 



DIVINE RIGHT OF CHURCH 

architect and builder. Doubtless there are 
genuine Christians outside the pale of the 
militant church, persons who through en- 
vironment, training, temperament, or acci- 
dent are not communicants of Christian 
bodies but who are earnestly following out 
the words of Jesus, "Ye shall know the truth, 
and the truth shall make you free." But un- 
less there are more churchmen who are 
Christians than there are Christians who are 
nonchurchmen, the church is in an embar- 
rassing defensive position. Nor is the 
churchless Christian more justified in hold- 
ing aloof from the church than is the Chris- 
tian churchman in assuming sole proprietor- 
ship of all Christian truth and goodness. 
Logically, the terms "Christian" and 
"churchman" should not have essentially dif- 
ferent meanings. To believe in Christianity 
and not believe in the church is similar to 
believing in good citizenship without a gov- 
ernment. 

If the church fulfills its mission in Chris- 
tianizing human society, it must needs em- 
phasize the essentials of its commission, and 
throw away the incumbrances with which the 
129 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

errors and blindness of men have loaded it. 
It must gird on the whole armor of faith and 
lay aside every weight that impedes it. A 
catalogue of the positive and negative needs 
of the church would be an immeasurable list. 
But there are some changes in the church 
which are compelling and immediate. For 
once and all the church must cast aside the 
worldly measurements of success. Jesus con- 
stantly taught that the standards of success 
in his kingdom were not those of the world. 
Whenever the church has forgotten these 
things it has invariably suff ered as a spiritual 
power. 

The restoration of the church to its ancient 
dignity is of utmost necessity. The church 
is not a mendicant supported by almsgiving. 
Communicants should be made to feel that 
their financial support of the church is the 
sanest investment that they can possibly 
make. The rightful dignity of the church is 
likewise lowered when it becomes a syco- 
phant, begging for members. The church 
should open its doors to all who willingly ac- 
cept the conditions of membership, but it 
should cease to be a beggar for recruits. 
130 



DIVINE RIGHT OF CHURCH 

Sycophancy is never so repugnant as when 
wearing the robes of religion. Jesus invited 
men to follow him, but he never bowed to 
any man in order to make a disciple. There 
was one who voluntarily offered to follow 
him whithersoever he would go, but Jesus 
deliberately scared him away with a gloomy 
picture. Jesus knocks at the doors of human 
hearts, but he never forces himself within. 
Men should not be permitted to think that 
they are bestowing an honor on the church 
when they take its vows. Church member- 
ship is a privilege conferred, not a favor 
granted. "We have exchanged," said Bishop 
Henry C. Potter, "the Washingtonian dig- 
nity for the Jeffersonian simplicity, which 
was in truth only another name for the Jeffer- 
sonian vulgarity." 1 A similar criticism may 
justly be made of some churches. We have 
exchanged cathedral dignity for clubhouse 
informality, which is only another name for 
irreverence. Men are not impressed by a 
religion whose institutions are unimpressive. 



1 From an address at Washington Centennial Service in 
Saint Paul's Chapel, New York, April 30, 1889. By permis- 
sion of Little, Brown & Company. 

131 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

A revival of religion in the world would be 
promoted by a revival of reverence in the 
church. Reverence is the rightful attitude 
of the human towards the divine. 

Between the church and the world a dis- 
tinct line needs to be drawn. Until society 
is Christian the position of the church in the 
world is, "The church of God in Corinth," 
and not the Corinthian church. This line 
must not be obliterated by the church taking 
on the color of the world as the salamander 
assumes the color of the object on which it 
rests, but only as society tends to grow more 
Christlike. Jesus told his disciples that they 
were different. "They are not of the world, 
as I am not of the world." This is not an 
unpractical attitude. James wrote his epistle 
to serve as a practical guide to conduct, but 
he is careful to define religion as a duty to 
the fatherless and widows, and a strict obli- 
gation of keeping oneself "unspotted from 
the world." The church has lost more influ- 
ence from its laxity than from its blue laws. 
Men respect and reverence an ideal which 
demands self-abnegation. "What do ye 
more than others?" is a question which the 



DIVINE RIGHT OF CHURCH 

membership of the church cannot lightly ig- 
nore. "What Christianity," wrote the great 
German preacher Christlieb, "in her antag- 
onism with every form of unbelief most 
needs is holy living." Holy living within 
the church will go further toward purifying 
the social life of the world than all legislative 
reforms enacted in the parliaments of men. 
The regeneration of the church will be the 
cleansing of the foundation which will purify 
all the streams of human society. 

"O, for a living faith in a living Re- 
deemer!" cried Richard Fuller. The church 
in our day is not a house "left desolate," it is 
an unhappy house in which can be heard the 
suppressed cries : "O, for the recovery of a 
lost Hope ! O, for a bright gleam of a fading 
Faith! O, for a renewed acquaintance with 
the forgotten Christ !" The most compelling 
need of the modern church is a return to the 
apostolic faith in Christ and the recovery of 
a lost vision for the realities of the unseen 
world. Who can question the truth of Dr. 
Lyman Abbott's statement that "The hope 
of the church is a return to the mystical faith 
of Paul in the invisible world of the spirit, 
133 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

and the passionate devotion of Paul for the 
unseen Christ." Historical research has ac- 
knowledged the unique place of Jesus of 
Nazareth in the annals of the race, art has 
portrayed the Son of Mary as the "fairest 
among ten thousand and the One altogether 
lovely" ; ethics has bowed to the Man of Gal- 
ilee as the wisest teacher of morals ; the wis- 
dom of the world has theoretically recog- 
nized his supremacy and said, "Never man 
spake as this Man"; the science of human 
relationships admits the beneficent influence 
of the Nazarene upon political and economic 
institutions; idealism concedes to the Man 
of Sorrows the first place on the roll of he- 
roes and martyrs; but the Christ of to-day 
is One who is seen against the background 
of the past or known impersonally by the 
proxy of his influence upon our civilization. 
Scientific research and philosophical spec- 
ulation have been unable to dethrone Jesus. 
Intellectual pride has admitted his unique 
relation to God and confessed : "Surely this 
man was the Son of God." Doctrinal falli- 
bility is not the sin of the church. On the 
whole, Christian theology is in intellectual 
134 



DIVINE RIGHT OF CHURCH 

accord with Peter's confession at Cassarea 
Philippi: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of 
the living God!" Altars to strange gods 
have rarely been set up by ecclesiastical 
Christianity. Intellectual loyalty to the Son 
of God has been the sheet-anchor of the 
church in the days when science was deifying 
physical laws. The faith of our fathers has 
been little affected by cults which have 
grown up about imaginary divinities. 
Count Zinzendorf, when a lad of ten years, 
listening to a learned discussion at his grand- 
father's table on first causes, cried: "Even if 
they do discover other gods, I am for Herr 
Jesus." The church has tenaciously held to 
this attitude when science has sneered and 
philosophy questioned. But the intellectual 
assent to Christian doctrine cannot meet the 
necessity of mystic communion with a Divine 
Companion. The immediate and compelling 
obligation of the church to our age is ex- 
pressed by Dr. Joseph Fort Newton in a 
luminous sentence in his volume, The Eter- 
nal Christ: "Here is the message of the 
church — to make the Eternal Christ real 
and eloquent to men — and by the sign it will 
135 



THE UNTRIED CIVILIZATION 

conquer." 1 More than all besides the church 
in the twentieth century needs an experience 
which will enable it to say, "And Christ 
stood in the midst." 

Lord Jesus, if in these far-off days, 
Thou art standing in our midst and our 
eyes are holden that we see thee not, lift 
the darkness from about us, that we may 
behold thee in the beauty of thy holiness 
and in the holiness of thy beauty I Ours 
is the Emmaus way of twilight faith in 
which we walk sorrowfully alone; join 
thyself to us, that our hearts may burn 
within us in the way ! We are very poor 
because the many things which fill our 
days leave so little room for the one 
thing needful; help us to clear our lives 
of rubbish and fill them with riches which 
wax not old ! Teach us that the Pearl of 
Great Price is obtained by the surrender 
of many goodly pearls ! We have learned 
much about the world in which we live, 
but our souls are ill at ease ; and now we 
would learn of thee! Far and long we 
have gone in search of the knowledge 
which enriches the mind and leaves the 
heart hungry; teach us more of Thee! 



*By permission of The Fleming H. Revell Publishing 
Company. 

136 



DIVINE RIGHT OF CHURCH 

Thou art the Way ; show us the way lest 
we stumble and fall! Thou art the 
Truth; reveal thyself to us, lest in our 
blindness we follow after error! Thou 
art the life; restore to us the Easter 
gladness of thy Living Presence! Thy 
kingdom come, thy will be done on earth 
as it is in heaven ! Amen ! 



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